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.

Comments

Re:Open Source

[another_twilight]

Moonlight is an open source implementation of Nvidia's GameStream. I've not used either, just answering your 'where is ...?' question.

Nope

[XSportSeeker]

Confusing article with annedoctal evidence. Dismissed.

Re:2.4 is very usable.

[DamnOregonian]

Bingo.
My game PC hasn't been connected to a monitor in ages. All streaming via Steam In-Home Streaming to either my Steam Link or my laptop, or Nvidia's GameStream + moonlight.
While 2.4Ghz N can have enough bandwidth for it, it's very rare for it to be able to successfully push that bandwidth across the link unless you're in a *very* unsaturated area (I am not- I can see ~50 2.4 APs)
I need 5Ghz AC to stream without stuttering. 5Ghz N works with occasional stuttering. 2.4Ghz is just unusable.
At my dad's place, 2.4Ghz N works just fine. Of course his nearest neighbor is a quarter of a mile away.

Re:Are we going to get remote desktop software soo

[Solandri]

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.

Where's the Apple?

[MSTCrow5429]

'iOS support is "pending further review from Apple."'

"games ran incredibly smoothly at the iPad's full 1080p resolution."

What?

android boxes

[sad_]

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.

Let me get this right.

[mjwx]

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.