Home Streaming Two Steam Accounts from a Single Host PC

[Swagnus Swagnusson]

I’m trying my best to explain this clearly, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I’m doing the opposite and overcomplicating a very straightforward problem

My son lives alternate weeks at my house and his mum’s house. His PC is at his mum’s house, so if he is at his mum’s house he and I play co op, PUBG, or Rust for example, using our own installs of the games from our own Steam accounts.

But when he’s at my house we don’t play co op games

Usually EITHER I play Steam games on the host pc, through my account.

OR my son plays Steam games on a mini pc set up in his bedroom , using in home streaming to stream from my PC.

The host PC outputs to my 27inch monitor via DVI and to a 42inch TV via HDMI anyway, using the GTX 1060 6gb gpu, we often run dual displays for various functions.

Would it be possible to run my Steam account playing Rust on the host PC and monitor, and then use the Virtual desktop functioning in Windows to host his Steam account as a second desktop , which is then streamed to his mini pc and monitor set up.?

Thinking about it the game or the fact we want to play co op isn’t relevant, would we be able to run two instances of Steam, one on the host PC,and one through home streaming,using the virtual desktop function. So we can play co op, or so I can playPUBG while he plays CS GO upstairs….

I’m not sure whether the GPU would cope, or whether there’d be a restriction down to the Steam software, or whether, as I wrote at the start of this post, what I’m asking is just obviously possible and I’m overcomplicating something very simple.

[kreiselhoschi]

You can do this using a virtual machine that has direct hardware access on your CPU, GPU, RAM. But you´ll definetely need decent hardware (GTX 1060 will most likely not be sufficient) because your host will have to run 2x OS, 2x Steam client, 2x game, etc. You can´t do that with a virtual desktop.

Please also consider that a VM is nothing to install and run with three clicks.

If the internet connection at your son´s home is fast enough (min. 15Mbit/s Upload), you could use VPN to connect to the mini PC at your home. Might work, might not. Depending on many factors I don´t know.

In my opinion, the most convenient way for co op games is having a console like PS4 or Wii.^^

[Yankee Clipper]

If you use a steam link, you don't have to sign in to the steam account you want to use. if you want to have two machines running on the same processor. you would need a seperate graphics card for each instance of the operating system and use a program like UNraid to allocate system resources to said machines. (view 8 gamers 1 cpu from linus tech tips) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKJw8IKVYQ8

[Orceph_Rye]

Hello!

I have a friend I play Hot Set games (ie: Heroes of Might and Magic) and I live in Texas and he lives in Maryland. We use in-home streaming over VPN so kreiselhoschi idea may work well.

If you don't want to get too complicated with VPNs try Hamachi:
https://www.vpn.net/

Doing a multi OS on a single machine with a VM is a tad on the extreme side and will require a second GPU at the very least. Also Nvidia GPUs loose between 5 and 15% performance in a VM VGA Passthrough configuration. Also if you are running an older AMD CPU you will run into a npt bug that is only recently been fixed for Ryzen. Also certain motherboards don't support GPU passthrough Also, it's just a pain in the butt. Fun if you like too tinker.

Another option would be to use Sandboxie to run a second copy of steam on your account and then use that to stream a second game.
URL: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=311943358

However with a 1060 GPU even with the 6GB edition you may run into some problems. I use to run 4 instances of Eve Online on the same GPU but.. that was Eve Online not PUBG.

[[masni] CYKA CLEANER]

"Also Nvidia GPUs loose between 5 and 15% performance in a VM VGA Passthrough configuration."

This is not true, more like 0-1%.

[Orceph_Rye]

Originally posted by CYKA CLEANER:

This is not true, more like 0-1%.

That depends on a lot of different things. I did performance tests of 6 different games on AMD and Intel motherboards and compared are bones with KVM VMs (in different configs) and on average got around 5% drop. The 10%+ comes from the way you configure the CPU. ( I used Xen once too but I never did a comparision so.. bleh)

To sorta stay on topic in Swagnus Swagnusson's situation he would need both the guest and host to have decent access to the CPU. You do not want the guest and host to fight over CPU time. You should have the vCPUs to be pinned and you should have at least one physical core allocated to the host only. I will admit that depending on your setup you can get better performance but under this situation he would except a 10 to 15% drop in performance.

Also as a side note I only ever got 0-1% while testing with an RX 480. Despite of stablity issues I had to overcome the RX 480 just killed it perfomance wise on a VM. Sadly it is so weak that even with the performance hit my 980 ti still won out.

In the end I think Swagnus Swagnusson's best options are the VPN or an attempt to run two instances of the same game.

[Swagnus Swagnusson]

Thanks for all the input, really appreciate it, some of it is way over my head but I'm gonna give it a go using the hamachi VPN and see how it goes.

The internet connection speed isnt an issue, and tbh I'm happy playing on minimum settings and even reduced resolution , to an extent, if it runs along smoothly.

Will update if there is anything worth adding to this thread.

Thanks again.