Flickering, desktop peeking through every few seconds

[Dibzahab]

Hi,

Steam game streaming has worked pretty well for me since its release, but I'm currently having some problems. I'm not sure when they began, because I use the service in spurts. When I stream, I am getting periodic flickering as part of a desktop is kinda' seeping through. I can't say for certain whether I'm seeing the host desktop or the client one, as it's just one frame and really manifests more like flicker than a distinct image. It is very distracting.

My hardware is pretty much bog standard, off-the-shelf stuff, with i5 and 1070 on the host and an i3 w/ IGP on the client. All the hardware encoding/decoding options are enabled and I am running current drivers. I have tried toggling the hardware decoding option on the client, but it made no difference short of spiking the CPU usage and battery drain.

If it matters, the game I've been testing the most is Dota 2 running in a 1080p borderless window.

I'm not sure if this is related or not, but alt-tabbing from the client is completely broken. When I alt-tab back in, I see a black screen with a small image in the upper-left corner and the window is unresponsive. Windows prompts me asking if I want to wait or shut it down and waiting generally does not help. I'm absolutely certain that this worked in the past, and it's very important functionality.

Any help, please?

Thanks

[ylla]

Hi,

The same thing just started happening to me - out of nowhere. For a split second, part of desktop will blink in and yes, it is very annoying. Have you found anymore information on this as I have been searching and haven't found much as yet? ( Both the laptop and the desktop have Nvidia cards and drivers. )

[Dibzahab]

Hello. No, sorry. I had to switch over to Moonlight. I despise having to run the GeForce Experience bloat, having to be logged into yet another service just to play locally, etc. I mean, I hate it so much... but it functions 100 times better than Steam's solution. Honestly, even GeForce Now streamed off the Internet is providing me with better results than Steam's inbuilt option does from local machines.

[ylla]

That's interesting because I also switched to that last night. Ha. I know what you mean about having to have one more service but also find it works very well.

[Dibzahab]

Glad you were able to find a workable alternative. Cheers, pal.

[lark]

Also been experiencing the same exact issue for the last week.

[TTVbadluckbiggs]

Same story for me here, I've been playing via Steam Stream Remote Play for over 6 months now no problem and all of a sudden screen/desktop flickering nonstop. My alternative is putting on my mobile vr headset and streaming my pc to it which is not a preferred alternative.

Moonlight looks like a great utility, I have to admit, I'm a bit sketch, but I'll look into that, thanks for expressing the alternative method you had used, Dibzahab.

[Zathu]

Same problem. It’s definitely the client desktop (or BPM) peeking through. It’s not an issue when using the same host PC through the Steam Link hardware or mobile app.

[Dibzahab]

Originally posted by Biggles:

Moonlight looks like a great utility, I have to admit, I'm a bit sketch, but I'll look into that, thanks for expressing the alternative method you had used, Dibzahab.

Sure, no problem. There's no reason it should be working better than Steam w/ NVFBENC enabled, but it surely does. Much higher quality and probably lower latency w/ the same or less bandwidth. If you have a NVidia board on the host, I'd definitely give it a try. The host software is all directly from NVidia, and if it's the client that you find sketch you could compile it yourself w/ freely available software. It's a bit of a pain, though, because it uses a lot of persnickity dependencies (QT is the worst ever, because they want to minimize their open source requirements by obfuscation).

Lately, though, I'm mostly just launching supported games directly through Geforce Now. It's free another month or so, IIRC, and is a lot less hassle than futzing w/ wake-on-lan and bypassing the Windows lockscreen and such.

[Zathu]

Still going here. I've noticed it happening with a controller, but not keyboard/mouse. Are you guys also using a controller?

[TTVbadluckbiggs]

Originally posted by Zathu:

Still going here. I've noticed it happening with a controller, but not keyboard/mouse. Are you guys also using a controller?

Specifically, yes, I am attempting to use a controller while encountering this issue, but I still encounter it on Kb+M

Mouse movement from the client device prevents that flickering in my case. I cannot use artificial mouse movement from the host device to produce the same results.

[Dibzahab]

Originally posted by Zathu:

Still going here. I've noticed it happening with a controller, but not keyboard/mouse. Are you guys also using a controller?

Happens to me with no controller paired. Just streaming Dota. Tried again recently and the behavior is still present.

[Mio Rin]

Is the game in windowed or fullscreen mode on the host?
I have not had any issues with the game running in windowed mode, while I've had some weird results with fullscreen mode on some games.

[TTVbadluckbiggs]

Originally posted by Mio Rin:

Is the game in windowed or fullscreen mode on the host?
I have not had any issues with the game running in windowed mode, while I've had some weird results with fullscreen mode on some games.

Any resolution setting, in my case, will result in the screen flickering. I haven't tried it in the last month but I should test it. If I discover anything useful I'll post here as well.

[GlenSkunk]

Been having a similar issue myself recently, since I just set up this Intel NUC to allow me to stream between my main gaming PC and the NUC. The flickering is mighty darn annoying as far as gameplay goes. I know drivers on both ends are up to date, so it does seem to be a problem with Steam. May give this Moonlight thing a try.

[Dibzahab]

Originally posted by GlenSkunk:

May give this Moonlight thing a try.

If you have NVidia on the host PC and don't mind the glut of obnoxious spyware NVidia's "Experience" installs or the requirement to have the PC unlocked and actively running the launcher then it's the way to go. From a performance standpoint, it's significantly better. Though, to be honest, I also get better performance streaming from the cloud via Geforce Now.

It's disgusting and Steam devs ought to be ashamed.