"Onlive" like setup, at home?

ShadowBlade

Morning all,

I have been searching the web for an answer to this, but not getting anything clear. I have one decent gaming computer, but it is completely impractical to haul it around the house. I would like to be able to play all the games I can on it, on a slower/smaller laptop anywhere. Particularly connected to my TV.

Is there any way to do this? To let the big machine do all the work? Basically like Onlive, but completely internal.

TychoCelchuuu

Not really.

ShadowBlade

Crappy.

TychoCelchuuu

Well, I should clarify: as far as I know, not really.

ShadowBlade

You would think there would be some variant of http://www.realvnc.com/vnc/index.html for just this purpose.

ShadowBlade

Would be great for other software too, but unless that application has changed dramatically or there is some other variant, it does not operate anywhere near enough to real time. Making gaming or finer software applications unusable.

TychoCelchuuu

There are plenty of things for using normal computer programs at a distance, but gaming is an entirely different ball game.

taliosfalcon

It's kinda interesting/sad, splashtop actually works pretty well for this, but they only have android/ipad connection apps, so you can stream from your pc to a tablet and play games, but not pc to pc.

ShadowBlade

How well does splashtop work for gaming?

Monoxide

ShadowBlade wrote:

How well does splashtop work for gaming?

Very well (depending on your WiFi network, of course). I've played a few PC games on the iPad using a wireless 360 controller through Splashtop. Doesn't work for something like, say, Battlefield 3, but playing Fallout is perfectly fine on it.

And it does support PC-to-PC. You just need the Client on the Client PC, and the 'Streamer' on the host gaming PC.

http://www.splashtop.com/remote/desktop4windows/download

PeregrineFalcon

Disclaimer: I've never tried this, but it seems to be a free version of StreamMyGame.

http://spgt.sourceforge.net/

ShadowBlade

Monoxide wrote:

ShadowBlade wrote:

How well does splashtop work for gaming?

Very well (depending on your WiFi network, of course). I've played a few PC games on the iPad using a wireless 360 controller through Splashtop. Doesn't work for something like, say, Battlefield 3, but playing Fallout is perfectly fine on it.

And it does support PC-to-PC. You just need the Client on the Client PC, and the 'Streamer' on the host gaming PC.

http://www.splashtop.com/remote/desktop4windows/download

I am trying this this week! Thank you!

Peregrine, I will look at your link too.

urahonky

Report back if you don't mind. This sounds very relevant to my interests.

ShadowBlade

I will, for sure, ura.

MrDelish

I am posting from my laptop in my living room that is connected to my monster desktop in my room. It didn't like BF3 in fullscreen 1920x1080 resolution but Garry's Mod and Binding of Isaac loaded fine. Garry's Mod is unplayable due to ~1 second of latency but Binding of Isaac was pretty playable. I don't think Splashtop is the solution for this yet, though.

fake edit: it doesn't allow full-screen applications at all

urahonky

There shouldn't be any lag if you're on the same network. I can see if you're at a friend's house or something, but if you're on the same network the latency shouldn't be enough to notice. Boo.

MrDelish

There might be settings I need to play with. I haven't looked around for forums about it, but I bet there's a solution for the weirdo mouse movement. It doesn't grab your mouse input and use it relative to the game like it should; it bases the movement around where it is compared the the center of the screen; ie, it keeps moving the mouse and bases each consecutive movement on where it is, not relative to the last movement.

as a side note, I like semicolons

edit: I have class now but I'll definitely look into this later today

urahonky

Ahhhh okay now I see. Since they are clearly not running at the same resolution it would have some weird movement... But it should work similar to Remote Desktop, right?

MrDelish

I suppose so.

After looking into it, there's no fix for the mouse thing. Still a good remote desktop program, though.

bowen

Well a 1280x1024 resolution, with no compression, at 30fps, [37.5 MByte/sec] on an average cat5e network (350 Mbit/sec == ~45 MByte/sec), will probably max the throughput of the entire network.

Wireless G averages at 36 Mbits (I think... theoretical max is 54 right?) [4.5 MByte/sec], so I can see it maxing that out pretty fast.

I say this doing absolutely no fact checking on my numbers

seabass

ShadowBlade wrote:

Morning all,

I have been searching the web for an answer to this, but not getting anything clear. I have one decent gaming computer, but it is completely impractical to haul it around the house. I would like to be able to play all the games I can on it, on a slower/smaller laptop anywhere. Particularly connected to my TV.

Is there any way to do this? To let the big machine do all the work? Basically like Onlive, but completely internal.

So, I have a similar situation, where my workstation is also the most powerful computer in the house, but my entertainment center is in one room and my home office is in another.

I solved the problem with really long cables and a drill.

ShadowBlade

Including for the keyboard, mouse, monitor and all???

seabass

ShadowBlade wrote:

Including for the keyboard, mouse, monitor and all???

To be more clear, the monitor at my work station is a real monitor, run with a VGA cable. It has a keyboard and mouse hooked into it at the desk, and I have a small set of speakers back there too for listening to tunes. The way it hooks into the entertainment center is 30 feet of HDMI and USB Cable. Specifically I have a long USB cable running to a USB hub in the other room where the keyboard, mouse, and gamepads plug in. I tried wireless, for the mice and keyboard, but that didn't work well because of the wall in the way.

It's an incredibly inelegant solution that I wouldn't recommend unless you like punching holes in walls, running cable, and hanging drywall.

ShadowBlade

No doubt!

Sorry I have not commented on the other suggestions yet. I still have to give it a full run. My time has been at more of a premium than I anticipated this week. At least others here have given it ago! Glad this thread is being useful!

Monoxide

MrDelish wrote:

There might be settings I need to play with. I haven't looked around for forums about it, but I bet there's a solution for the weirdo mouse movement. It doesn't grab your mouse input and use it relative to the game like it should; it bases the movement around where it is compared the the center of the screen; ie, it keeps moving the mouse and bases each consecutive movement on where it is, not relative to the last movement.

as a side note, I like semicolons

edit: I have class now but I'll definitely look into this later today

Don't use Splashtop for the input. Use a 360 controller or other wireless input device connected directly to the computer. The latency shouldn't be nearly as bad as you're saying it is, but if you do have latency problems they're going to be compounded by the fact that you're trying to send input and receive the results over the same shoddy connection. It's much better to have your input going directly to the PC, not to mention the fact that it's better suited for most games, unless you're playing civilization or something where latency doesn't matter anyway.

There is a settings menu in splashtop you can bring up to change it from 'quality' to 'speed'. It's 3-finger tap on the iPad, not sure how you access it on the PC or iphone clients.

MrDelish

Monoxide wrote:

MrDelish wrote:

There might be settings I need to play with. I haven't looked around for forums about it, but I bet there's a solution for the weirdo mouse movement. It doesn't grab your mouse input and use it relative to the game like it should; it bases the movement around where it is compared the the center of the screen; ie, it keeps moving the mouse and bases each consecutive movement on where it is, not relative to the last movement.

as a side note, I like semicolons

edit: I have class now but I'll definitely look into this later today

Don't use Splashtop for the input. Use a 360 controller or other wireless input device connected directly to the computer. The latency shouldn't be nearly as bad as you're saying it is, but if you do have latency problems they're going to be compounded by the fact that you're trying to send input and receive the results over the same shoddy connection. It's much better to have your input going directly to the PC, not to mention the fact that it's better suited for most games, unless you're playing civilization or something where latency doesn't matter anyway.

There is a settings menu in splashtop you can bring up to change it from 'quality' to 'speed'. It's 3-finger tap on the iPad, not sure how you access it on the PC or iphone clients.

An 802.11N connection is shoddy? Like I said, it's not a matter of latency; it's how Splashtop handles remote mouse input.

ShadowBlade

Monoxide wrote:

Don't use Splashtop for the input. Use a 360 controller or other wireless input device connected directly to the computer. The latency shouldn't be nearly as bad as you're saying it is, but if you do have latency problems they're going to be compounded by the fact that you're trying to send input and receive the results over the same shoddy connection. It's much better to have your input going directly to the PC, not to mention the fact that it's better suited for most games, unless you're playing civilization or something where latency doesn't matter anyway.

There is a settings menu in splashtop you can bring up to change it from 'quality' to 'speed'. It's 3-finger tap on the iPad, not sure how you access it on the PC or iphone clients.

Going to have to try all this. I do not have a good wireless controller or KB/M that I can use at that distance though... Maybe a good xmas investment? Has anyone else found this effective?