Remote Play freezes on client end

[blunion05]

Recently I linked up with a friend to play Heave Ho.

My friend sends me the invite (making him the host) and initially I had a problem where the screen on my end was showing his strangely sliced and squished on the top of my monitor and the rest of the display going to the bottom black.

This was resolved by unchecking the option 'Enable hardware decoding'.

The problem I'm experiencing now is to keep the Remote Play session from freezing on my end. I'm noticing the connection quality is consistently yellow and in rare instances drops to red. Eventually through the Remote Play session, at some point, the connection quality drops to red indefinitely and then freezes up immediately.

What seems to have helped alleviate the issue and kick the can further down the road is to limit the client bandwidth in the Advanced Client Options under Remote Play in Steam's Settings menu.

My download connection speed is 32 Mbps, and so far having tried limiting the client bandwidth to 15, 20, and 25 Mbps provide a stable experience until 30-45 minutes in everything inevitably freezes.

Previous things I tried to fix this issue before adjusting the client bandwidth option was:
- Re-installing Steam
- Limiting resolution to 1080p
- Setting the Client option to Fast (rather than Balanced of Beautiful)
- Restarting my router
- Restarting my computer

What else can be done to try to address this issue? Hoping somebody can provide solutions or direction.

[hexling]

I have had a similar issue and will let you know if I find a solution.

First tho: limiting to 1080p is still very high res. Try limiting to 480p and see if it helps, then work your way up the resolution until you find a good balance. If it doesnt help then it likely isnt on your end or else isnt an internet issue and would probably be a issue encoding the video on the host end.

It also would help to know what graphics card the host has, some settings that might help are only available to nvidia cards.

[GuRu Asaki]

Remote Play freezes on client end

Most likely it's a problem with Remote Play, or the fact that
the Host just has very bad Internet / Computer Specs.


Remote Play With Friends is not a New Platform, & it's been there a long time,
& has never been a very good Program...

Lag between Host & Client Devices are much worst for the Client User,
because they take all the lag from the Host while the Host takes 0 Lag
from at least the Internet Side... The Host can still get Hardware lag though...

It's a flawed mechanic...

- STEAM Remote Play With Friends
- TEAM VIEWER
- Microsoft Quick Assist
- Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection

Are all very close in terms of how you Remote Play with another Gamer,
but each has different Security Measures... They all have the same
Lagging / Freezing / Controller issues, though...

Is this the problem you have or do you have a different problem?

[hexling]

Ok so I pretty much fixed it. I (the host) am playing on a fairly beefy computer so theres not really any issue there, the issue was mostly as far as I can tell the internet struggling to send a 1080p 60fps stream to the client. Dropping to 720p (and 480p would probably work better if you still have issues) and limiting the framerate to 30fps made everything go away. It also seemed to freeze more when there were a lot of graphical effects on screen (could be my computer or could have something to do with bit-rate idk) so limiting effects can help as well.

[solntselikiy]

Hi, I found two variables of to stop the frozen game.
1. If you have for example witcher 3 or any other game with launсher you can start this game, and u will see in launсher some link (in witcher 3 it is a link to cyberpunk or any other web page). After clicking browser on your host (remote PC) will be opened and u will have access to your desktop. Taskbar and steam.
2. I closed game via steam (taskbar also was frozen for me) but u can connect to you desk top via mobile steam link (down load it and link via desktop connection from step 1) good luck

[Yuki]

This thread was quite old before the recent posts, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.