Different Resolution/Aspect Ratio Between Host and Client

[damoose1]

My gaming PC (the one doing the rendering) has a 16:10, 1680x1050 display. My HTPC (one I am streaming to) has a 16:9, 1920X1080 display.

What happens to the game's resolution when I stream it? I obviously want to run it at the 1920x1080 on my HTPC, and at 1680x1050 when I play on my PC locally. Most games detect the resolution of the computer it is running on, and gives a list of supported resolutions. For instance, most games on my Gaming PC do not offer 1080p as an option, because the display does not support it.

Will Steam automagically tell the game what resolution it is running on, or am I in for a mess of squashed and stretched images?

[JSON Bourne]

You will have to change the resolution in-game to the resolution of the monitor you are playing on.

[-bg-]

From my experience, streaming from different aspect ratio will result in black bars, the streaming client will stretch the display while keeping the host aspect ratio.

[damoose1]

That is disappointing. Hope they fix that. WIll have to do some testing when I get the chance tomorrow.

[olan1225]

I streamed from a PC with 1920x1080 to a laptop that has 1366x768 display and had 1080p as resolution on the hosting pc. The laptop showed the game in 1080p and there were no black bars but this was using the same aspect ratio 16:9!

[Ghostyroasty]

I played PinballFx 2 this evening.. I'm in the same boat as you. My tower is 1600x900 and my htpc is 1920x1080 ... I went into the settings for the game and the resolution is set at 1600x900.. No way to change it to anything other than what the server pc can accept. I haven't looked, but is there an override for the resolution of the display in Windows?

[sc5mu93]

I had the similar issue but I found a slightly hackish way to make it work on the client end (which is all I really care about). I'm sure there is probably something more elegant, but this is all I could come up with.
Server = 1440x900.
Client = 1920x1080.
In testing out a couple of games, those games detect the rez and refresh of the rendering machine ("server'") display only. So I had to come up with a way to fake it out.
I remembered back when I folded you could add a dummy monitor using a Dummy VGA adapter.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-make-a-dummy-vga-dongle.86507/

I dug out my old dummy vga adapter, hooked it up, disabled EEID (or something like that in Catalyst Control Center) and set the max res of the resultant "Dummy" Generic non-upnp VGA monitor to 1920x1080. (<-- here you might be able to set your target rez).
Here is the trade off, Windows only lets you render games on the primary display. So you have to set the Dummy monitor as the primary display, which means you can't really play on the "server" game without swapping it back, and moving the start bar, etc.

But it does stream 1080p from the server to the client, even when you don't have a 1080p display attached to the server.

[Wraith]

I'm also in this same boat and would love to be able to get full upscaled resolution on my client system. It does work with the black bars, but it definitely detracts from the experience. Doesn't seem like it should take much just to stretch the image. Perhaps in a future beta update?

[borg_7_of_9]

I was testing on my old rig with an old monitor 1440x900 iirc and i was getting black bars coming from 1920x1200 19:10 bit of a bummer def need some scaling..

But also check what rez you are running in the Steamos Desktop it may be wrong witch will add to the problem..
SteamOS cant detect my old display so I had to choose a rez the monitor could play nicely with or the bars where too big..

I don't think Valve thought this out very well with most ppl using older hardware for SteamOS, It would be pointless having it on my kickass gaming rig as everything works in windows..

Streaming to my old rig make much better use of my hardware and I'm sure it will run some titles natively but for now there isn't enough to warrant it!

[Trippy]

I tried streaming to my old macbook running windows (1200x800) from my desktop (1080p). I tried Portal 2. Basically, the game launches on both screens and i can either set it to render at 1080p and stream that, or 1200x800 and stream that.

Selecting one causes black bars on another.

I'd prefer if the host could render off-screen, really.

[stonedsquirrel]

I have the same problem. My server is 1920x1200 and my client 1440x900. The graphics driver only offers locally supported resolutions. I was thinking there must be a way to force the driver to offer a custom resolution. Google comes up with a lot of hits about doing something like that with Catalyst. I will give it a try later and report back.

[stonedsquirrel]

This one worked for me just fine:

http://www.ehow.com/how_7649449_add-custom-resolution-ati.html

I can now select 1440x900 in the games while keeping the desktop resolution. I'm sure there is a way for NVidia too.

[Bossman207]

Was hoping that there was some answer on here already. I'm going to try the custom resolution thing though. Hopefully it will stream even if my host monitor does not support the custom resolution.

[damoose1]

I found that if you use AMD's VSR (Virtual Super Resolution) or probably Nvidia's DSR, you can get access to more resolution options. I was able to get 1920x1080 as an option from that.

[Tamisan]

same issue...

[bristol_flyguy1980]

Whats there to fix ? it makes sense you cant choose a bigger resolution when all in home streaming does is copy the host picture (in non technical terms)

If you want same resolution on host and client then make sure the monitor on both systems is set to the same resolution. It doesnt matter if client resolution is smaller than host resolution. But host should be the same and/ or bigger resolution than the client. Valve cant fix what isnt broken. Sorry not disagreeing with the OP, but you cant fix what is common sense / documented in depth already about how in home streaming works.