Steam Link in this game is awful

[jburdick7]

As the title says this game is straight unplayable over Steam Link.

- Have to start the game up on my PC then start streaming it to my Steam Deck or else the picture is framed in a tiny box instead of taking up the whole screen

- The frame rate gets royally screwed up. I don’t mean network latency, the frame rate drops to like 15 fps even during the opening CGI cutscene. Never seen any game do that before.

I use Steam link all the time and never had these issues with it before. Hell, I played through all of Remake using Steam Link to my tv without a hitch. Not sure what’s different about this but it’s pretty much impossible to stream if you have a headless PC or use an OLED monitor that you’d like to keep off while not in use and even when it works the performance glitches out so bad it’s unplayable either way.

[Bob Pullen]

Think I might be seeing similar on the frame rate front. That said, I've never had problems with the aspect ratio.

I've a modest host machine (i5 8400/2700 Super) and am about 10 hours in, having played almost exclusively using Steam Link.

Host settings
Change desktop resolution to match streaming client: On
Use NVFBC: Off
Enable hardware encoding: On
Software encoding threads: Automatic
Prioritise network traffic: On

Client settings
Video: Beautiful
Bandwidth limit: 40Mbps
Framerate Limit: 60fps
Resolution limit: Automatic (1280x800)
Hardware decoding: Off
HEVC Video: On
AV1 Video: Off
Low latency networking: On

Game settings
Display mode: Borderless Full Screen
Screen resolution: 1280x720 (need to drop above to windowed mode to change this)
Framerate: 60fps
Display Sync: V-Sync
Dynamic scaling Max: 100%
Dynamic scaling Min: 100%
All detail/quality settings on High
Aliasing: DLSS

Steam Deck performance overlay
Disable Frame Limit: On

Issues I've encountered (the first one sounds similar to your experience): -

• After a variable amount of time (often less than an hr, rarely more), the framerate seems to tank to unusable levels. It's odd though as it's only client-side and the overlays on both the host machine and Steam Deck continue to report that all is ticking along nicely at 60fps (when it clearly isn't).
  
  The symptoms don't point to my local network because I can easily fix the issue each time simply by dropping the display to windowed and back to borderless in the in-game menu (does this work for you too?).
  
  
• Sometimes when initiating the stream from the Steam Deck there is no audio when the game boots. Closing and re-opening tends to sort this.
  
  
• I'm seeing quite a few missing/mangled textures, but this is evident on the host machine too so isn't a streaming thing. Lowering the graphics settings doesn't seem to help here so I'm starting to think it might be disk-related (the game's installed on a SATA SSD). I'm due a storage upgrade and have an NVMe on the way so hopefully that will help.

I could just sit at the host machine which works fine at 1080p (excepting the texture issue) but I'm determined to get things working more satisfactorily from the sofa!

[Rogal-117]

You could try streaming the game with Parsec or Moonlight/sunshine just to check if the issur is just with steam link

[Bob Pullen]

Should have mentioned that I'd tried with Moonlight/Sunshine and could have sworn I'd seen the same issue. I've just given it another go though, and managed an hour so far without an occurrence 🤞

Intermittent stutter, but it's within tolerance and I haven't spent much time optimising my Moonlight setup yet so am probably missing a few tweaks that would help.

[Party Boat]

I'm having the same issue with client framedrops happening after a certain point when using in-home streaming. Toggling windowed / fullscreen in the way Bob Pullen describes fixes it but that's annoying to do in a cutscene.

I did start out playing using Sunshine / Moonlight (which is generally my preferred streaming solution) but that was even worse as I run into the Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) bug - on nvidia cards the stream drivers can crash when HAGS is enabled and VRAM utilisation is close to maximum. Disabling HAGS fixes this, but means that stream performance suffers when the GPU is under heavy load (i.e. all the time).

My system is modest (nvme drive, 5700X3D, 3070) but I've been able to get good performance sat at my PC. I'd just like to be able to have that sat on my sofa as well.

[Bob Pullen]

Interesting. Further into my Moonlight play session yesterday I encountered multiple occurrences where the video froze but the audio continued. My input was still being registered (indicated by the audio on the client device/visuals on the host machine) but the Steam Deck video was well and truly stuck. Had to terminate and rejoin the session and alt/tab on the host machine to bring the game window back into active view.

Sound like the sort of symptoms you'd expect to encounter with the HAGS bug? If so, I'll avoid wasting my time trying to troubleshoot it.

[MyLinuxRig]

steamlink in general is awful. moonlight/sunshine are much better bets. i can stream BG3 with no lag on moonlight, whereas steamlink its a slideshow.

[Bob Pullen]

That was my experience prior to (counter-intuitively) disabling hardware decoding in the Steam Deck settings. With that option disabled, things are much smoother.

At the moment though, neither option is all too favourable for me. Native involves frequent toggling of in-game menu (that can't be done mid cutscene/battle etc.), Moonlight involves me having to occasionally extract myself from the sofa to fix things when the stream dies/freezes.

[Bob Pullen]

NVMe installed today and early signs suggest it's resolved my missing texture issue, so I'm putting that down to the SATA SSD I was using. Hopeful it might also improve the streaming situation, I've just hopped onto the Steam Deck only to be presented with this fresh hell[imgur.com] about 40 minutes in, soon followed by a black screen/crash when trying to open the in-game menu.

Would appear I'm now witnessing the joys of the Direct Storage issue that's doing the rounds.

Now off to shuffle some DLL files around and see if it helps. Not sure what's more of an adventure at this stage: the game, or the effort required to get the damn thing running acceptably!

[Party Boat]

Originally posted by Bob Pullen:

Interesting. Further into my Moonlight play session yesterday I encountered multiple occurrences where the video froze but the audio continued. My input was still being registered (indicated by the audio on the client device/visuals on the host machine) but the Steam Deck video was well and truly stuck. Had to terminate and rejoin the session and alt/tab on the host machine to bring the game window back into active view.

Sound like the sort of symptoms you'd expect to encounter with the HAGS bug? If so, I'll avoid wasting my time trying to troubleshoot it.

Yeah, that sounds like the HAGS bug. The only fixes for it are to either keep VRAM usage under 90% or to disable HAGS, which tanks the stream performance.

[jburdick7]

I mostly fixed my issues by switching over to Apollo and using that with Sunshine. Need to dial in the settings (supposed to be using 7.1 sound but it sounds like everything’s coming out of my front 3 speakers + dialogue sounds muddy/muffled) and hardwire my Apple TV but so far it’s very playable 1440p high settings even with the ATV on WiFi at the moment.

Will set my Steam Deck up tonight but I have no idea what was causing the aspect ratio bug with Steam Link. I do use an ultra wide but I also have the PC connected to a TV in my office area that I switch to when I game stream down to the living room with the big tv & surround sound so it wasn’t even using the ultrawide when I was running into that.

[JamieLinux]

Originally posted by jburdick7:

I mostly fixed my issues by switching over to Apollo and using that with Sunshine. Need to dial in the settings (supposed to be using 7.1 sound but it sounds like everything’s coming out of my front 3 speakers + dialogue sounds muddy/muffled) and hardwire my Apple TV but so far it’s very playable 1440p high settings even with the ATV on WiFi at the moment.

Will set my Steam Deck up tonight but I have no idea what was causing the aspect ratio bug with Steam Link. I do use an ultra wide but I also have the PC connected to a TV in my office area that I switch to when I game stream down to the living room with the big tv & surround sound so it wasn’t even using the ultrawide when I was running into that.

Glad its sorted,

Sadly the steam link while was great ( have a few myself). has more issues with stuff anymore.

[Party Boat]

I've been tinkering with settings to see if I can artificially cap VRAM usage so that the HAGS freeze doesn't kick in, mostly by using the updated FF7hook to apply an artificially low cap to r.Streaming.PoolSize. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me - regardless of settings Rebirth seems determined to allocate as much of my 8GB VRAM as it can. This seems to be a general thing with UE5 games - I had the same issue with Alan Wake II and had to disable HAGS there as well.

[Party Boat]

Another update to say that I've gotten the best performance with Steam Remote Play with hardware encoding (on the host) disabled. This produces an unavoidable hit to stream quality - but on a 3070 it's not like I'm getting 4k60 anyway so it's barely noticeable. Unfortunately it seems like all streaming solutions (Steam, Sunshine, Apollo etc) all have major performance issues using hardware encoding when the GPU is under heavy load, which is inevitable in this game on my aging PC.

Using software encoding I've been able to run the game at 1440p and medium settings without any real issues - I had a tiny hitch at one point when an achievement popped but it returned to normal instantly.

[jburdick7]

Originally posted by jburdick7:

I mostly fixed my issues by switching over to Apollo and using that with Sunshine. Need to dial in the settings (supposed to be using 7.1 sound but it sounds like everything’s coming out of my front 3 speakers + dialogue sounds muddy/muffled) and hardwire my Apple TV but so far it’s very playable 1440p high settings even with the ATV on WiFi at the moment.

Will set my Steam Deck up tonight but I have no idea what was causing the aspect ratio bug with Steam Link. I do use an ultra wide but I also have the PC connected to a TV in my office area that I switch to when I game stream down to the living room with the big tv & surround sound so it wasn’t even using the ultrawide when I was running into that.

Just updating this to say the issues I was seeing with sound/lag were due to the bit rate being too low. Once I bumped that up I get a flawless 1440p/60 with HDR & 7.1 surround sound. Played through almost all of Indiana Jones and a few hours of Final Fantasy this way with no issues.

As far as the Steam Deck is concerned I’ve switched fully to Apollo just because not having to mess with a virtual display since I have an ultrawide is more convenient than having Steam’s built in solution. If Valve could iron out their in home streaming to function in a similar matter I’d switch back but it’s just such a game changer with Apollo that I can’t see myself using anything else.

[SlickDrickle]

i literally played this on remote play streaming from my house to work (it was an incredibly slow day) and it ran 60fps 1080p without any issues.