Considering a steam deck but not happy with performance on new games. I have a gaming pc that can play everything but long for the day of sitting out on the deck with a beer and playing current games. Been looking into local streaming and this might be the solution I’m looking for. Do many do this or is it an isolated use case?
How many people using sunshine/moonlight for streaming games that don’t run well?
QuestionAll the damn time. You'll still get some compression in certain circumstances, even on very high bitrates, but much less than your average YouTube video.
I also use it to play 4k content on my TV.
Had the Deck for two years now and it never ceases to amaze me how much it's enabled different playstyles.
As an added bonus, the battery life when running Moonlight is supremely impressive. 8-10 hours.
Just be sure you've got a strong wireless connection to your router, and preferably hardwire your PC that's doing the heavy lifting for best results.
I also use it to play 4k content on my TV.
Do you mind explaining your setup for this and the equipment you use? I've been trying to figure this out for a while now.
Moonlight and Sunshine allow you to play remotely, and when docked and routing video out to a TV or other display, the Deck is not limited to its native resolution, so long as the Sunshine host has resolution settings for your desired endpoint display, you can send whatever resolution to the Deck you want.
If you're like me, though, and don't run Sunshine on a PC with a 4k display, you'll need to program in a custom 4k resolution to select for when you intend to remote play. If you don't mind the pixel fill from 1080p to 4k, this step is unnecessary, but my Sunshine PC runs 1440p, which doesn't fill 4k neatly.
Just be aware that upping the resolution will tax the bitrate into compression and artifacting more. I haven't pushed the Deck to figure out at which point it craps itself under the weight of higher bitrates, but I've managed to get 4k60fps games streamed through it to my livingroom TV with acceptable compression artifacting. Probably not great for racing games or fast-paced shooters, though.
Ah OK you're doing 4k60. For some reason I thought you'd done 4k120 which is what I'm struggling with.
I haven't tried 120hz yet. To be honest, I'm not sure the Deck can handle that rate of decompression at a tolerable bitrate; and I know that for anything I'd want to play, my poor old 2080 can't drive 4k120hz anymore. I'll check in with my GF next time we're both home from work at the same time and see if she's been streaming anything other than Isaac or the likes; her 6950XT can breeze through 4k120, so that would let us benchmark it via the Deck alone.
What sort of issues are you having? And does your dock even support 120hz @ 4k? Most don't.
I'll update if I learn anything interesting. Might not be until the weekend before I get a chance to test this, though.
What sort of issues are you having? And does your dock even support 120hz @ 4k? Most don't.
That's the issue. Finding a dock that supports it. That's why I was initially asking what your equipment was.
Sorry, I missed the relevance of how you worded that. I use the Jsaux 12 in 1 dock. Probably not worth the money, and it's actually been a bit of a headache; it has a surprising amount of coil whine in the DC rectifier for the LEDs in it. But I settled on it specifically because it supports 4k120 or dual 4k60, has plenty of USB, ethernet, supports 100W power, etc. Was basically looking at what I might need for a Deck2.0 or whatever is on the horizon.
Definitely the way to play heavy games. I already had a dedicated AP on my PC for wireless VR streaming, so my local network was already super optimized. If you have the local network for it, it really does look native. Probably better. Since it's so easy to run at a super sampled resolution, at a high framerate, all while sipping the battery power.
I would do it too if hdr worked on moonlight
It runs great for me on the LCD model and an old wifi router. The latency is lower than running 30 fps on the Steam Deck itself.
Remember to lock the game to 60 fps on your PC though. Otherwise, it would stutter due to mismatch framerate.
Works fantastically as long as your PC has a good wired connection and the Deck / your deck has decent wifi. FYI, there is (was?) a bug on OLED that occasionally causes drops, just (open up the wifi menu / restart moonlight / toggle wifi on-off / whatever) and it'll work perfectly again
Honestly, I don't use as often as I thought I would. Most games run "good enough" for me natively on the SteamDeck with a little tweaking. But there are a couple of games I use it with, because I can't quite get them stable enough. I do have a router dedicated for streaming wireless VR, that's connected to my gaming PC though, so using that same dedicated wireless connection for streaming to the SteamDeck works great.
I have a config that when I launch moonlight it 1) switches my primary output to my tv in my office (that has HDR support) 2) changes the resolution to match the Steamdeck 3) launches steam big picture.
the result is a perfectly seamless experience on the deck that feels native incl HDR in supported games. I have a couple WiFi 6 access points in my house hardwired to my router/computer and very very rarely do I ever get any stuttering.
10/10 recommend and for the last year it’s been the majority of my Steamdeck use.
I use it constantly mainly due to the battery life being triple while streaming for most games.
I have a hard wired network and it runs bad for me. I’m not sure if I need to change settings on my computer or what.
Same. I thought maybe I could get Forza working looking great. Lots of artifacts and frame drops.
It was very good when I used it to play Lies of P, basically indistinguishable input lag. Helped a lot with perfect blocks. It's worth setting up to try out for yourself, assuming your internet is good.
I use it for all my demanding games. Runs absolutely flawless
I basically use my deck as a client device for the TV. I stream 1440p from my pc.
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Thanks for all the info. I do have a great network. Pc is wired Ethernet. I can pull gigabit speeds from internet and from my lan to my Nas so my network is tight. WiFi is also great can pull 600+ up and down through WiFi.
I use this all the time as I'm treating my deck like a switch -
local gaming on deck when on the go max 720p, streaming via moonlight to my PC while docked 1080p.
I've streamed my PC to a few different devices.
First consideration. Your router. PC should be wired. Wifi5/AC I've had mediocre results. Not surprising for me to hear LCD Steam deck users having bad results with streaming.
I use WiFi6e with the OLED Steam deck(also WiFi6e). Great results Moonlight / Sunshine. I abandoned Steamlink awhile ago, so can't comment on it's current function.
I pretty much only use my steam deck this way. It’s a streaming device for me.
I do this all the time for my higher demanding games.
I literally don't play from my PC anymore. It's either run locally on my deck, or streamed to my deck from my PC :D
If I have access to WiFi I stream. It sips on the battery and I don’t have to have a bunch of games installed. And with MoonDeck it’s so easy.
I'm new to having a steam deck. I have an nvidia gaming pc. Which would I use? Moonlight or sunshine?
Moonlight is the client you install on the deck. Sunshine is the host you install on the desktop PC.
Also, it's worth just trying the built in steam remote desktop.
Awesome, thanks!
Honestly I use my deck to stream games from my PC just as much as I play games natively on the deck
There are other options too - namely Steams own Remote-Play which is actually really good so long as you remember to deactivate hardware decoding on your Steam Deck settings, and GeForce Now which installs very easily on the Deck and means you can stream games from their servers rather than you having to have your PC turned on.
I do this. Although some games run well enough (40-50 fps), I also have it installed on my computer. If I have my computer on, I stream from Sunshine to Moonlight on my Steamdeck. I also have my Viture Pro XR glasses I wear in bed so I can lay back and get 120 fps streamed to the glasses. Such a bomb setup.
Yeah I use moonlight for every triple AAA because the deck is extremely limiting in that regard. (if playing AAAs low settings at 30FPS is your thing then fine by all means).
Did a thread about wifi streaming not too long ago : https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightStreaming/comments/1dez74l/is_there_such_thing_as_a_100_perfect_stream/
Basically despite what many will say here, wi fi streaming is not 1:1 like running native (color banding especially is part of the deal on non HDR games, and on all games if you don't have OLED anyway). Also there will always be some loss in sharpness no matter the settings. Still, a LOT better than running your game at 800p native because you're oversampling at higher resolutions from your pc (2560x1600 being the sweet spot because the deck is exactly half that).
Having quality almost as good as native requires streaming with the absolute best settings (150mbps in moonlight) which requires an ideal setup.
Again you'll see people streaming at 30 mbps telling you it runs just like native. My eyes bleed at 30 mbps looking at that horrible blurry mess, but more power to them I guess.
Also micro stutters, frame drops are unavoidable for everyone with current technology. Some people wouldn't notice them if their life depend on it and people always exaggerate when they share things they like, but some would definitely feel them enough that it kills some of the fun.
So yeah dismiss the "It RuNs AbSoLuTeLy FlAwLeSs" posts. Doesn't exist. Can get pretty close.
Also there's the added input lag which is not really noticeable for me because I don't play FPS games.
Having a close to perfect streaming experience (it will never be perfect no matter what you do, even full wired is not perfect) requires an ideal setup obviously, good gaming rig with healthy windows (wired to router), wifi 5ghz on a good router, no crowded environment regarding connected devices etc.
Just try and see for yourself, for me it's always better than running native (witcher 3 native at 800p medium Ughhh no thanks.)
Also Steam remote play is garbage use moonlight.
Best thread Ive found regarding ideal setup :
I'm using Parsec (on Windows). But I just did it for Alan Wake 2.
Most people do not have clean, wired networks. Without that, you're going to get crushing, jitter, dropped frames, input lag or worse.
If you DO happen to have a great network, wired PC? Give it a go. Mine is about 90% where I would want it to be, so I really don't bother streaming myself. I'll just go sit at the PC.
I do it all the time. Works great as long as you have a solid WiFi connection and your PC is on Ethernet. Can't even tell it's being streamed.