Steam In-Home Streaming Now Available To Everyone

[DPI]

So I install steam on both computers, however I can play a high end game on my lower end laptop using my 46" TV plugged in as if my higher end desktop was hooked up to the TV? Or am I still restricted to hardware limitations on the laptop and this is simply a way to play a game without installing it on that computer?

Think of it like RDP'ing / remote session into your gaming rig from your laptop.

1. Log into Steam on your Windows PC (gaming rig). This will be the host.
2. Log into Steam on another computer on the same network, and visit your Steam library
3. Select a game -> select "More Ways To Play" -> select your host PC and start playing.

 

[SGTGimpy]

So I install steam on both computers, however I can play a high end game on my lower end laptop using my 46" TV plugged in as if my higher end desktop was hooked up to the TV? Or am I still restricted to hardware limitations on the laptop and this is simply a way to play a game without installing it on that computer?

So your experience will vary on several factors from, your main rigs power, network speed/ throughput and as well as how well you’re other PC can decode the stream.

Your main rig has to not only play the game you are streaming but encode the stream as well which can add a little overhead. In turn your laptop needs enough balls to be able to decode the the stream fast enough to limit latency to your input. Then there is your network throughput which can limit your overall streaming quality.

Each one of these area's can impact the overall quality which the Streaming system will try to adapt the stream for the best quality possible. So you will just have to try it and see how it works for you on your network and systems.

 

[shspvr]

I think shatterstar missed the point of it being local connection only. You can't do it over the internet. Hence why it is called In-Home streaming.

Also OnLive is totally different then Steams In-Home Streaming on so many different Levels. Main one, OnLive was over the internet. Not on a local low latency network.

Not really the only different is it local but you still have some latency
Here a picture on how it works which basally the same way as OnLive

 

[Staples]

How popular is their other inventions like Family Sharing? If I had not read about it here, I would not have ever known about it. This is probably another feature that they will bury in the menus and NOT advertise so people might actually know it even exists.

 

[RangerXML]

I'm sorry but I don't get it...

I can't imagine why would I want to stream a game from one computer on my network to another one? why not just play from that computer?

had it been where your just logging into steam account via http site rather than steam client it would have huge potential so that it would give steam access to android, ios + home gaming console devices but if you need another steam client pc just play on that pc running the game...

This is just useless streaming, waste of bandwidth.

I have a multi thousand dollar PC in my office that is in a big ars case that is a pain to move, but I want to kick back in the living room and play a new game like Watch_Dogs or Star Citizen, I can A. spend another couple of hundred to a thousand buck and put together a decent PC to play on medium or high settings or B. I can hook up a $100 Steambox net top, plug in a controller and play. Its not for fast pace FPS shooters, but more like GTA/Watch_Dogs, maybe an MMO or a MOBA, but its for sure for something you can plug in a controller and just enjoy.

 

[Stardusted]

Over ethernet it works amazingly well. Wireless is, understandably, not as good. I wonder if an old atom netbook can actually handle the streaming.

 

[RangerXML]

I've got an Atom 330 net top at home waiting to find out

 

[theboxmx3]

I have a multi thousand dollar PC in my office that is in a big ars case that is a pain to move, but I want to kick back in the living room and play a new game like Watch_Dogs or Star Citizen, I can A. spend another couple of hundred to a thousand buck and put together a decent PC to play on medium or high settings or B. I can hook up a $100 Steambox net top, plug in a controller and play. Its not for fast pace FPS shooters, but more like GTA/Watch_Dogs, maybe an MMO or a MOBA, but its for sure for something you can plug in a controller and just enjoy.

this!

 

[sfsuphysics]

So your experience will vary on several factors from, your main rigs power, network speed/ throughput and as well as how well you’re other PC can decode the stream.

Your main rig has to not only play the game you are streaming but encode the stream as well which can add a little overhead. In turn your laptop needs enough balls to be able to decode the the stream fast enough to limit latency to your input. Then there is your network throughput which can limit your overall streaming quality.

Each one of these area's can impact the overall quality which the Streaming system will try to adapt the stream for the best quality possible. So you will just have to try it and see how it works for you on your network and systems.

Gotcha, now I'm curious to find out. Also got to figure out which games I have on Steam that are controller friendly, unfortunately I think most all my games are mouse based. Wonder if Portal 2 can be configured for analog joypad sticks instead of a mouse.

 

[DPI]

Gotcha, now I'm curious to find out. Also got to figure out which games I have on Steam that are controller friendly, unfortunately I think most all my games are mouse based. Wonder if Portal 2 can be configured for analog joypad sticks instead of a mouse.

When you enter Big Picture mode, and go into your Library, there's a dropdown to filter the list of games - and one of the options is "CONTROLLER SUPPORTED". Enjoy.

 

[Megalith]

I had no idea this existed until today. Guess there's no need for me to upgrade that HTPC.

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Just streamed Dark Souls 2 from my gaming rig on 11ac to my circa 2005 laptop on 11n.. amazing. Occasional hitches/artifacts, but still amazing. Very happy with this feature!

 

[RangerXML]

I'm going to test it on my old Acer Revo (currently Windows 7), when that works, I'm going to try SteamOS on the Revo and if that works I'm going to put a cheap small SSD in their and just make it a SteamOS streaming console with an xbox 360 controller.

 

[DPI]

How popular is their other inventions like Family Sharing? If I had not read about it here, I would not have ever known about it. This is probably another feature that they will bury in the menus and NOT advertise so people might actually know it even exists.

IHS is not buried in the menus. No initial configuration required, its enabled by default. Only requirement is logging into your Steam account with two or more computers on the same network. Then when you enter Big Picture mode there's a popup that says In-Home Streaming is connected.

IHS is also currently the main News item when logging into Steam, hard to miss. Not sure what else they need to do short of annoying people with popup nags or something.

 

[Canon]

Well I'm impressed with this new feature.

I streamed from my gaming rig to my AND E350 (Zakate, think first gen AND APU), 4G ram and a 60GB SSD and the result was a very playable and enjoyable experience from my recliner in front of my 63" TV. The video quality seemed good to me and frame rate also seemed I really couldn't tell I was streaming it from the other room.

I played about a half hour of Skyrim and Boarderlands 2.

I have a gigabit wired connection between my PCs.

In my eyes this really brings PC gaming to my livingroom. I'm glad they did this. So much better than the NVIDIA solution for me (none of my hardware supports it).

 

[Staples]

IHS is not buried in the menus. No initial configuration required, its enabled by default. Only requirement is logging into your Steam account with two or more computers on the same network. Then when you enter Big Picture mode there's a popup that says In-Home Streaming is connected.

IHS is also currently the main News item when logging into Steam, hard to miss. Not sure what else they need to do short of annoying people with popup nags or something.

Oh, I disabled the news pop up window. All I remember seeing were ads for sales. I wish I could do that on origin. Nice to know it isn't obscure as I had thought.

 

[BassDX]

I just attempted this on my 5 year old laptop with Linux Mint. I think in the future this could be quite amazing, especially if they manage to get this to work over the internet, but it seems a little limited right now in my usage case. Every game I attempted to stream had some noticeable amount of lag or screen tearing. Granted, my laptop was connected to a wireless network so I am sure that impacts the performance, but I am wondering if the fact that the client machine is old or is using Linux also a factor.

 

[octoberasian]

Well I'm impressed with this new feature.

I streamed from my gaming rig to my AND E350 (Zakate, think first gen AND APU), 4G ram and a 60GB SSD and the result was a very playable and enjoyable experience from my recliner in front of my 63" TV. The video quality seemed good to me and frame rate also seemed I really couldn't tell I was streaming it from the other room.

I played about a half hour of Skyrim and Boarderlands 2.

I have a gigabit wired connection between my PCs.

In my eyes this really brings PC gaming to my livingroom. I'm glad they did this. So much better than the NVIDIA solution for me (none of my hardware supports it).

And, that is the key feature of In-Home Streaming: non-proprietary and cross-platform regardless of the underlying hardware.

You don't have to worry whether you have an Nvidia 600 series or higher (Game Streaming) or locked to one video card brand (Nvidia). I'm sorry Nvidia (GSync, PhysX, Game Streaming, etc.), proprietary is not going to win everything in the end.

The other great thing about this is that as long as your destination computer is fast enough to decode the incoming stream and you have a very good in-home network connection (WiFi or Ethernet), you are pretty much set. If an AMD E350 (Zacate) can do this just as good at 1080p to a 63-inch HDTV, then I'm sure an equivalent Atom or faster Atom can do the same. Heck, you could probably use a BRIX from Gigabyte or Intel NUC to do this as well as the destination PC. Could the Surface Pro 2/3 or equivalent work as well? Maybe.

Best of all is that the destination computer doesn't need to have Windows installed. It can also be OSX or a choice of your favorite Linux distro. The source, for now, still has to be a Windows PC with Steam on it until Linux and OSX versions of Steam support it as a source of the game streaming. It doesn't entirely unchain us from Windows but it does mean we can build cheaper HTPCs using a Linux distro in the living room or den without the need of having Windows installed on them, and start playing games right there without sitting at our desk in a room somewhere in the house.

 

[Ocean]

looking forward to the reported tablet android and iOS client versions.

then i can game where i shit.

 

[DPI]

I just attempted this on my 5 year old laptop with Linux Mint. I think in the future this could be quite amazing, especially if they manage to get this to work over the internet, but it seems a little limited right now in my usage case. Every game I attempted to stream had some noticeable amount of lag or screen tearing. Granted, my laptop was connected to a wireless network so I am sure that impacts the performance, but I am wondering if the fact that the client machine is old or is using Linux also a factor.

Using wireless instead of wired was likely your biggest bottleneck.

 

[Reality]

so are you essentially playing a low latency video of the game? Your main rig does the work and the device you're using in another room is just showing you a low latency video feed of the game, kind of like having a second monitor hooked up to your pc and put in another room

I wanna try this on my old 2ghz pentium laptop that I got a few years ago

 

[1st Sgt. Burke]

Does the game run on the main pc at the same time? Could someone else use the main rig as normal as you play on the tv?

 

[timta2]

Does the game run on the main pc at the same time? Could someone else use the main rig as normal as you play on the tv?

Yes, the game runs on the main pc you are streaming from. No, it cannot be used for other things as it's essentially like a mirror.

 

[hdgamer]

Working great for me. Uninstalled from my other computer to test some games out. Some games run fine with almost no noticeable lag. But they're not getting the frames even though I'm streaming from a pc with a 780ti to a 1080p tv. Also seem to stutter a bit more too. Metro2033 is a game even with aa turned down still has lots of lag. So seems game dependent but still a cool feature.

 

[dr.stevil]

Working great for me. Uninstalled from my other computer to test some games out. Some games run fine with almost no noticeable lag. But they're not getting the frames even though I'm streaming from a pc with a 780ti to a 1080p tv. Also seem to stutter a bit more too. Metro2033 is a game even with aa turned down still has lots of lag. So seems game dependent but still a cool feature.

Try turning on the overlay to view the performance/latency. You can see where the problems tend to be with certain games. With the F6 key (or Xbox home button + Y), you can toggle on a graph that shows the latency for encoding, decoding, input, and network. So it gives you a good idea if it's the host or remote computer that's the bottleneck (or network for that matter). Likewise, it will tell if if you're dropping any frames currently, and the total number of frames dropped. I never have too much of an issue with that, but I've seen it happen on heavy physics games and/or when using Wireless (N). Usually turning down the compression quality or bandwidth can fix it.

Likewise, you can try manually setting bandwidth limits (lower can actually help framerates sometimes), compression quality, target FPS and target resolution in settings. Also, set the rendering resolution in game to 1600x900. You'll see very little difference from native 1080p on most TV's and you'll get much better FPS. Also, make sure you turn off VSync. Since it's sending the output image to a remote computer, it wont do anything anyway and can cause issues.

The settings that tend to work best for me for the vast majority of games (i7 4770, HD7990, 4GB and over a high performance gigabit LAN) are:

20MB bandwidth target
Native desktop resolution
medium/normal compression quality
60FPS target

also setting the game resolution, as I said above, to 1600x900 and turning off Vsync. Another tip, for the SLi/Xfire people, if you have problem, disable it. I've fixed a lot of games with poor IHS performance by turning it off

Some games 'can' run better with higher settings, but you'll eventually run into issues with stuttering or frames dropping into the 25-30fps territory on certain games. IMHO, it's easier to find something that works good for the vast majority so you're not having to tweak it every time. Some games, too, will just run like crap no matter what you do.

Another thing to note, some DX9 titles wont work all that great. Valve could of fixed it by now, but I know that DX10/11 titles were running much better. Something about the API in DX9 not being as optimal as the later.

 

[JMke]

I'm sorry but I don't get it...

been living under a rock the last few months?

SteamOS + SteamController= living room gaming.
SteamOS = linux.

In-home sharing allows you to run Windows only games on the SteamBox.

 

[Armenius]

Working great for me. Uninstalled from my other computer to test some games out. Some games run fine with almost no noticeable lag. But they're not getting the frames even though I'm streaming from a pc with a 780ti to a 1080p tv. Also seem to stutter a bit more too. Metro2033 is a game even with aa turned down still has lots of lag. So seems game dependent but still a cool feature.

Odd, Metro 2033 was actually one of the games I tried that was running the smoothest while streaming. I did not have to alter my in-game settings in any way, running with highest settings enabled (AAA) except Advanced DOF. Main PC has an i7-4770, GTX 780, GTX 570 (PhysX), and 16GB of RAM.

I tried it out last night on a laptop with an AMD A4 APU. I was pleasantly surprised that almost everything I tried ran flawlessly with no noticeable lag at all. My PC is wired to the router, and the laptop was connected wirelessly over 802.11n. Only game that had any noticeable glitch was Wolfenstein. Occasionally it would loose sync with a white screen flash just before it came back. I tried out Wolfenstein, Metro 2033, Arkham City, and Skyrim. Main PC runs Windows 7 Pro SP1 and laptop runs Windows 8.1.

 

[Armenius]

Oh, just to add, the source games were running at 1920x1080 while the laptop's screen was at its native 1600x900. It's great that I really didn't have to change anything and the streaming just works.

 

[hdgamer]

Where do you change the compression quality and fps target?

Had stalker COP running good but still getting stutter bumps. Don't notice much lag in that game where Metro is still somewhat difficult to aim with mouse and keyboard.

 

[MavericK]

I tried this in beta and the input lag was horrendous, even over a gigabit network. Not sure what was going on there but it was barely playable.

 

[dr.stevil]

Where do you change the compression quality and fps target?

Had stalker COP running good but still getting stutter bumps. Don't notice much lag in that game where Metro is still somewhat difficult to aim with mouse and keyboard.

Under Steam> Settings> In-Home Streaming

 

[dr.stevil]

I tried this in beta and the input lag was horrendous, even over a gigabit network. Not sure what was going on there but it was barely playable.

could of been a number of things causing it. The only real way to narrow it down would be to use the overlay (or logs) to see where the bottleneck was. It could of been encoding or decoding taking too long or even network congestion/configuration. (or just happened to have a game that had problems).

Over a gigabit network, I typically have anywhere from 20ms-60ms of total latency with the settings I use... depending on the game being streamed.



this is a good guide for reading the graph & troubleshooting, pulled from a steam thread about IHS

The dark blue line is the time taken to encode the frame (too high = weak CPU on host)

The light blue line is then the time taken for that frame to be transmitted over the network (too high = weak network)

The red line is the time taken to decode the frame and draw it (too high = weak CPU/GPU on client depending on which is being used as decoder)

Since its a stacked graph you can pretty much read off the red line as being the sum of the *additional* latency added by the streaming. The F6 display also shows the *total* latency, which is the sum of the input latency (time taken by the host to receive data from the controller) + time taken for the host to generate a frame (game latency) + display latency (latency resulting from streaming as shown on your graph's red line).

The other specs just show what resolution the capture is, how much network bandwidth Steam thinks is available and how much it is using and the overall frame rate. A bad network link will give you dropped packets, and a slow decode on the client side will give you dropped frames which are also shown.

IMHO I think the best sequence for optimisation is to reduce the frame rate first, then the capture resolution - going from 60fps to 30 halves the amount of data being captured, sent over the network and drawn. This will have a massive impact on your latency. Going from 1080p to 720p will also drastically reduce your latency. Network bandwidth only really affects the image quality. I think for 720p @ 30fps it seems to want to use about 15mb/s for me at least. I don't know if higher compression rates (lower bandwidth allocated) affect capture latency, I haven't measured it.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the streaming process is going to reduce your game frame rates overall on a weak rig. If you're CPU bound in some games you're going to have a bad time (as I've found out mucking about with Dolphin and PCSX2 on my ancient Core2quad).

HTH
Dave

 

[hdgamer]

Well I figured out why fps like Metro are laggy with mouse and keyboard. Input display latency is 30ms average. It plays fine but defiantly noticeable lag when turning and aiming.

 

[hdgamer]

I tried this in beta and the input lag was horrendous, even over a gigabit network. Not sure what was going on there but it was barely playable.

Just discovered that with metro. Stalker seems ok though. This would be good for non multiplayer shooter games though. I can have games like the witcher series, Dark Souls, etc all stream to my htpc and game with a controller on the couch.

 

[dr.stevil]

Well I figured out why fps like Metro are laggy with mouse and keyboard. Input display latency is 30ms average. It plays fine but defiantly noticeable lag when turning and aiming.

That's pretty common. Do you have a 360 controller to test? It might be better believe it or not.

In a bunch of games, using the mouse to navigate menus can be a PITA... but a controller always seems to work perfectly.

 

[hdgamer]

Yes controller much better. Just loaded up borderlands 2 and plays pretty much flawless but still get stutter bumps. The graphs are good though and getting no loss of frames.

 

[Thuleman]

It's awesome that Steam developed a solution to a problem no one has.

 

[dr.stevil]

It's awesome that Steam developed a solution to a problem no one has.

Speak for yourself. I don't have any room for an office in my current apartment, so I have to keep my rig in the bedroom. If my old lady is sleeping, I'm SOL if I want to do any gaming.

Now I have the option to stream it to my HTPC/Steambox in the living room or my laptop anywhere else in the house.

 

[dgz]

Well, it doesn't work for me. It says my ubuntu laptop is not connected even though I AM LOGGED IN. fuck this shit

 

[dr.stevil]

Well, it doesn't work for me. It says my ubuntu laptop is not connected even though I AM LOGGED IN. fuck this shit

Are you on the same subnet?


check the Steam IHS community group forum. Lots of good info there.