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With Steam Link App, Your Smartphone Can Be An Imperfect Gaming Monitor (arstechnica.com)
Ars Technica's Kyle Orland shares his experience with Valve's recently announced Steam Link app, which lets users play games running on a PC via a tablet, mobile phone, or Apple TV on the same network. The app launches today for Android 5.0+ devices; iOS support is "pending further review from Apple." From the report: Valve isn't kidding when it says a Wi-Fi router in the 5Ghz band is required for wireless streaming. I first tested iPad streaming on the low-end 2.4Ghz router provided with my Verizon FiOS subscription (an Actiontec MI424WR), with a wired Ethernet connection to my Windows gaming rig on the other end. The Steam Link network test warned me that "your network may not work well with Steam Link," thanks to 1- to 2-percent frame loss and about 15ms of "network variance," depending on when I tested. Even graphically simple games like The Binding of Isaac ran at an unplayably slowed-down rate on this connection, with frequent dropped inputs to boot.
Switching over to a 5GHz tri-band router (The Netgear Nighthawk X6, to be precise), the same network test reported a "fantastic" connection that "look[s] like it will work well with Steam." On this router, remotely played games ran incredibly smoothly at the iPad's full 1080p resolution, with total round-trip display latency ranging anywhere from 50 to 150ms, according to Steam Link's reports (and one-way "input lag" of less than 1ms). At that level of delay, playing felt practically indistinguishable from playing directly on the computer, with no noticeable gameplay impact even on quick-response titles like Cuphead.
Switching over to a 5GHz tri-band router (The Netgear Nighthawk X6, to be precise), the same network test reported a "fantastic" connection that "look[s] like it will work well with Steam." On this router, remotely played games ran incredibly smoothly at the iPad's full 1080p resolution, with total round-trip display latency ranging anywhere from 50 to 150ms, according to Steam Link's reports (and one-way "input lag" of less than 1ms). At that level of delay, playing felt practically indistinguishable from playing directly on the computer, with no noticeable gameplay impact even on quick-response titles like Cuphead.
Where are the open source projects that accomplish these tasks? I'm willing to start one, any other backers?
> latency ranging anywhere from 50 to 150ms
> At that level of delay, playing felt practically indistinguishable from playing directly on the computer
Maybe compared to a cache-less Packard Bell ...
This would be an unusual experience if you could cast a viewport to another person. It'd be kinda cool too b/c then you could have someone else in a space combat game spotting bogies.
latency ranging anywhere from 50 to 150ms
Self confessed ping snob here. If the latency is over 100, or worse, if it keeps changing between 50 and 150, that would drive me bonkers. In fact for online play existing network lag absolutely does bug the hell out of me. Perhaps for casual slow paced games this might be acceptable, but not for fast paced twitch gaming. But then again if you are using a phone or tablet screen with ??? as the input device, well I guess you are already willing to settle for compromises.
VNC works fine but If it's possible to game at 1080P with low latency it should also be possible to navigate a windows folder without a noticeable lag as reloads the screen.
trying to watch video on a remote system is a automatic slideshow yet they are managing 60fps with the steam link.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
FWIW, although you definitely want the 5 gHz band, I have been playing with this on my Galaxy Tab 3 with standard issue 2.4 gHz TP-link router running OpenWRT. My experience is nothing like this review. It's very playable, with occasional stuttering. Pretty responsive even on titles such as Dead Cells.
>"With Steam Link App, Your Smartphone"
>"tablet, mobile phone, or Apple TV"
>"launches today for Android 5.0+ devices; iOS support is pending further review from Apple."
>"I first tested iPad"
>"iPad's full"
Exactly where does an "ipad" fit with "smartphone" or Android? They pretty much imply the only released client from the three is Android, and the review is about an ipad? Yes, I even read the article... same thing. There is no "first tested ipad", that was the ONLY thing tested in the article. Confused.
This is completely false. Of course it works better over a wired LAN connection, but I've used SteamLink without problems over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi even with cheap shit DLink, Netgear and (Cisco-)Linksys routers. Maybe the problem is the OP's Actiontec MI424WR and/or local interference (e.g.: from unshielded Chinese microwave ovens).
Even graphically simple games like The Binding of Isaac ran at an unplayably slowed-down rate on this connection, with frequent dropped inputs to boot.
This is awful. But I have to scratch my head and ask WHY?!!? You can use in-home streaming between devices on some pretty lousy wifi and it works great?
Confusing article with annedoctal evidence. Dismissed.
but really isn't once you get it done.
VNC and Remote Desktop encode the desktop as graphics elements, and transmits that to the client for display. It does fine when the display is simple (which is why they disable the desktop picture on low bandwidth connections). But if the display starts to become cluttered or complex (like video), it begins to slow down.
Steam Link and other streaming apps like Splashtop take a totally different approach. They use the GPU's h.264 encoder to convert the desktop into a video, and simply stream that to the client. The disadvantage is that the output doesn't exactly match the desktop - you start to get pixelation if the image becomes complex or there's rapid motion. The advantage is that it's much faster at complex images like video and game output, and because the client just sees a h.264 video stream you can use practically any modern device to display it (nearly everything has a h.264 decoder built into it).
A good analogy would be VNC and Remote Desktop are like GIF and PNG. Steam Link is like JPEG. If you want the remote desktop to perfectly mirror the original, then PNG/VNC are the way to go. But if a slightly inaccurate reproduction (with pixelation and colors slightly the wrong shae) is acceptable, then JPEG/Steam Link is much better.
'iOS support is "pending further review from Apple."'
"games ran incredibly smoothly at the iPad's full 1080p resolution."
What?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Remote Desktop (RDP) doesn't work that way. Maybe for video or anything hardware-accelerated, but for general desktop usage it does things quite differently from VNC, and is much faster because of it.
Who needs a pixel perfect reproduction? Give me a fast remote desktop.
this is also great use for those plenty available android boxes, you can have kodi on it and the steam streaming app with a wired interface. it should be easy to use a steam controller with those as you can plug in the dongle into one of the free usb ports you will most likely still have available. i need to test this out, it could mean i no longer need my link.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Newer versions of Microsoft's RDP protocols are very advanced and performant. On my iPhone 6S running Microsoft's RDP client and connecting to my Windows 10 Pro computer over LTE, I get almost completely smooth video experience watching YouTube on Chrome.
See below for more insight into their more recent improvements:
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/01/11/remote-desktop-protocol-rdp-10-avch-264-improvements-in-windows-10-and-windows-server-2016-technical-preview/
Speaking as a white person, you're a racist piece of shit and are worth less than the people you are insulting.
So I need to be in my home, on a 5 GHz wifi network (presumably non congested) with my Gaming PC on and running a game in order to play games on a tablet...
Why wouldn't I just use my gaming PC? Or my Laptop that has much of my Steam library on it?
Seems a lot of pissfarting around to play games on a screen 1/3 a big as my gaming PC, slower than my gaming PC and with peripherals far inferior than my gaming PC.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Maybe they're trying to enable headless (and much cheaper) gaming boxes?
Hindu isn't a race, you stupid fuck.
Also, if you are white, then what business do you have speaking for people who aren't white? Sorry, but you're even more of a bigot than the person you responded to, because you think you have the authority to speak for people not of your religion or race.