Why was FPS Lock removed from Streaming? Will it come back?

[abrasion]

I'm a single player gamer, I couldn't personally give a damn about 60fps in 99.9% of the games I play. Steam Streaming, for me - will never be about MP or twitch based (meatboy) games. I want to stream adventure games or puzzle or at best 3'rd person action RPG's. You know, maybe KOTOR or Jade Empire at most?

I really just want to be able to stream in the utmost quality. I'm sure there was a 30fps limiter, I'd guess it was removed for a good reason? but honestly, I kind of would prefer an FPS lock and focus ALL bandwidth on quality, audio / video etc.

Thoughts?

[slouken]

It was removed mostly to simplify the system, and with the new quality options it seemed unnecessary for most people.

The "Beautiful" quality option gives the best streaming quality and will drop framerate to 30 FPS if necessary to achieve it. Does that option work for you?

[yayuuu]

For me FPS is always limited by my cleint's display refresh rate. If I set it to 90 Hz, it will capture 90 FPS, even if it will lag as hell. Currently the only way to play is to have my refresh rate set to 50 Hz permanently.

I have "Beautiful" quality.

I'd like to see a separate option with FPS limit that we can choose manually, so I wouldn't have to look for a workarounds every update.

[Link316]

I too would also like to see an FPS limit performance seems to jump around at beautiful settings but when limiting the refresh rate like yayuu just stated he has, quality and performances seems much better.

[Soygen]

While I appreciate the simplified options, it would be cool if there were an advanced set of features we could tweak on our own as well.

[slouken]

There is actually a way to do it.

Launch Steam on the client computer with the -console option, then once it's running, go to the console and type @StreamClientArgs --framerate 30

It's a little inconvenient since you have to do it every time you launch Steam, but you can at least try it out and see how it works.

[yayuuu]

Yay it works! Also 50 FPS limit at 90 Hz Refresh rate generates lower latency than 50 FPS at 50 Hz (25-36 ms at 90 Hz compared to 40-50 ms at 50 Hz).

Edit: When slouken gave suggestion about command line, I decided to experiment a bit and found an ultimate solution!

This is my shortcut's command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -console +@StreamClientArgs "--framerate 50"

[Link316]

slouken eredeti hozzászólása:

There is actually a way to do it.

Launch Steam on the client computer with the -console option, then once it's running, go to the console and type @StreamClientArgs --framerate 30

It's a little inconvenient since you have to do it every time you launch Steam, but you can at least try it out and see how it works.

yayuuu eredeti hozzászólása:

Yay it works! Also 50 FPS limit at 90 Hz Refresh rate generates lower latency than 50 FPS at 50 Hz (25-36 ms at 90 Hz compared to 40-50 ms at 50 Hz).

Edit: When slouken gave suggestion about command line, I decided to experiment a bit and found an ultimate solution!

This is my shortcut's command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -console +@StreamClientArgs "--framerate 50"

Doing this seems to work well for me also it is more stable with less latancy and spikes. Seems like adding the frame limiter back in the settings may help some people.

[CompHel]

Can confirm that there's a huge improvement by locking the fps, without it some games keeps jumping between 60 and 30, with it the frame rate is a rock solid 50ps, even the latency is significantly lower.

[abrasion]

You shouldn't have to manually lock it - why on earth did they remove it if my suspicions are indeed correct? I want to throw my entire gigabit at 30fps quality :( not 60fps mess.

[yayuuu]

I have noticed another weird thing. When I set quality to Beautiful with 50 FPS limit, the image looks good at first but after some time, quality becomes worse and used bandwidth becomes lower than at the beginning. Also bandwidth over 60 Mb produces lag spikes.

When I set quality to Fastest, the image quality looks as good as Beautiful in the beginning, but the bandwidth doesn't drop and there's no lags even with 75 Mb+ bandwidth. It means that quality is actually better with Fastest than with Beautiful.

I understand that Steam wants to have everything simplified, it's like Windows. I like windows over Linux, because when I install windows, it already works. However Windows still allows me to tweak few things to make it work even better for me.

Why don't you guys just make "auto" settings in in-home streaming feature, that already works when you install Steam, but also let us tweak few things, like:
- FPS limit,
- Manual bandwidth limit, higher than 30 Mb (for me around 60 or 70 Mb would be good to make sure that lags won't appear)
- Manually select encoder (QuickSync or NVidia)

Also are there other parameters that we can use with @StreamClientArgs? Maybe you can at least post the full list of command line parameters, so we can tweak it how we want? I'm already satisfied with my current settings (Unlimited bandwidth, 50 FPS limit, Fastest quality, 1920x1080@90Hz - looks as good as on the host PC and works perfectly), but there might be a way to tweak it even better, especially for people with slower clients, etc.

[Tucu]

I have also noticed the gradual drop in quality and reported bandwidth. Using QuickSync quality starts great and reported available bandwidth starts at around 200mbps. Quality and bandwidth slowly drop until the image is very blurry and reported bandwidth is very low (between 5 or 10mbps). Restarting the game solves the problem for a while.
Locking the FPS with Riva Tuner to 45 or 50 seems to solve the problem
Edited: This is playing Assassins Creed III, a game with big FPS fluctuations on my PC (from 35 to 60 depending on the area)

[slouken]

Please try today's beta update. I believe I fixed one cause of degraded performance over time. Can you let me know if it's better for you?

Thanks!

[yayuuu]

I have tested it today and I don't see the quality drop over time (not performance, because perfotmance was always the same for me). I have done also few things that I did before, like changing resolution and it keeps the same quality all the time, so everything is good.

I still have a question, what is exactly the difference between Fast and Best? For me quality is always the same, bandwidth is also the same, but with Best I see lag spikes earlier than with Best, so I can't push FPS limit higher, for example:

Guild Wars 2:
Best @ 50 FPS - very rare lag spikes, happens like once a hour for a few seconds, game is playable
Best @ 55 FPS - common lag spikes, unplayable
Fast @ 50 FPS - lags doesn't happen at all
Fast @ 55 FPS - very rare spikes, game is playable
Fast @ 60 FPS - common lag spikes, but not as common as with Best @ 55FPS, still playable

Some fighting game (more action and flashing lights):
Best @ 45 FPS - rare lag spikes, playable
Best @ 50 FPS - lag spikes almost all the time, unplayable
Fast @ 50 FPS - no lag spikes at all, playable

Some screenshot to compare quality:
Best @ 50 FPS http://imgur.com/82b2ZaI
Fast @ 50 FPS http://imgur.com/ZCuKXJ1
Can you see any difference?

[Tucu]

I tested the beta version today and I did not see any degradation over time. Quality and available bandwidth remained more or less constant (with or without the FPS lock)

slouken eredeti hozzászólása:

Please try today's beta update. I believe I fixed one cause of degraded performance over time. Can you let me know if it's better for you?

Thanks!

[slouken]

Glad to hear it, thanks!