Category: Steam

Is streaming feasible on the Steam Deck or to the computer?

Paul1 Reply

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The Preface of this post

Let’s begin with that what I am about to talk about is probably not even going to work for most of you because it would require way to much money to upgrade your home networking. This however is going to be something to understand and consider in your future upgrade plans for your home networking. Nothing here right now will stop you from streaming or make it useful but it will be a chance to educate you on how you might want to proceed in the future and make the experience a little more enjoyable. You also have the options of downloading games and installing onto your steam deck but someone games won’t work with the Steam as well as streaming them. This topic will at least maybe make it more enjoyable for you and make it so you can stream and not be pulling your hair out in the process.

Bandwidth will be the issue

Depending on what your computer you are using that you want to stream to your Steam Deck, the issue will be for the time being the amount of information that is sent to the Steam Deck.   Most  games are playing at the Highest possible settings and that requires the information to be transmittable to the Steam Deck.   Something like 1440p or really good RTX graphics card will want to send all this information to the Steam Deck.   There will be movement Lag or game lag even if you had the best home network in the world.  I can’t see this being without some form of lag.   You are essentially trying to send loads of data over either wired to Wireless or Wireless to Wireless, or even Wireless to Wired connections.    Even then you have a cap of how much data can be sent to through the air or though a wired connection.

Wired VS Wireless

Let’s Now talk about the speed caps and how much you will most likely get with each one of them.   According the LifeWire, You will get these types of speed:

I tend to think this is somewhat accurate because I can’t see this not being any faster than this in most cases. You have objects in the way to get to the wireless whether it being a Door, a Wall, or even other objects. That will tend to slow the connection down because of errors and bandwidth.  Even then even if you had gotten a 802.11ax wireless router the Steam Deck right now could only do the 802.11ac so that would mean it could only do 200 mbps(Milibytes Per Second) even at the best of times.

Now let’s talk about Wired options.   You can buy  dock that will connect to your wired network but the Steam Deck Dock will only do 1 Gbps which is way faster than you could wireles.   You would need  to do several things to get a faster connection.   One buy a Switch or Router that is 2.5Gbps capable, and upgrade your wired connections to a Cat 7 or 8.  You’d also need a 2.5Gb Ethernet connection to the Steam Deck by using a USB-C to 2.5gb Ethernet connection.  You can also use this to download games faster if you have a already have installed a big enough HDD or maybe you expanded your MicroSD card selections.  I have not yet to found a dock that will support 2.5gbps that will work with the Steam Deck but I am not sure if they even make them just yet.  It would be nice but I doubt anyone but maybe Steam Deck will incorporate that into their next versions of the DOCK.  You will also need to make sure you Desktop system that you want to stream from or two is capabile of thw 2.5gb also on a wired network.  You will need to check with the company that you bought your system from or check the motherboards website to see if it has a 2.5gbs ethernet connection.  Most gaming systems or motherboards will already havea 2.5gbs connection but some don’t.  So you might need to buy a 2.4gb ethernet connection dongle for the laptop or desktop in question.

Game performance tweaks

Finally with all that  being said, the last way to not have so much game lag while streaming is drop your resolution of the game and make the game run with less graphics.  Turn off DLSS and other options in the game, also if it says it is running best possible graphics, drop it down to mid way or lower and that will allow the information tobe transmitted faster to your streaming device such as the Steam Deck.  Even with this, it might still be a little slugish and slow to respond.  So the best approach, I have come up with is to download the games onto the Steam Deck and try to play them on the steam without streaming them.  I’ve found that most games work rather well playing from the Steam Deck than to try to stream them.   The only one so far I haven’t had a chance to try to figure out is Micrisoft Flight Simulator 2020.  I am hopeful they will release a patch for that so that I can play that on my Steam Deck.  Although, I have begun to try to figure out a way to get it to run on the steam deck like it does on the Linux machines I’ve used in the past.  Hopefully I will come up with a Hack to do that.

What’s your thoughts on Streaming Vs Downloading?  Do you have any problems streaming or have you had similar issues?  What games seem to run smoothly while streaming or did you have any games that will work well streaming?  I’d like to hear your results also.

How to play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Steam version on Linux Mint 20.1

Paul
MSFS2020 on Linux Mint 20.1

Run Microsoft Flight Simulator

I’ve been trying to get this to work the last few days on Linux because of Windows 11 set to come out in the follow months.   However, I was also wondering if this would work on Linux as it should be able to to do.   As you know steam has some great ways to run windows games on it.   The problem that most people have is just to figure out the right way to run it.   I am here to help those who might still be having difficulty in running Msfs2020(Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020) on Linux because it seems to have so many people having issues with running it.   According to ProtonDB, This game should be playable with Gold standards which means it should run perfectly after some tweaks.   I don’t know about the rest of you but It’s more than some tweaks but I digress.

Install wine

The First step you will need to do is check out my other post about installing Wine on Linux Mint.  If you followed those instructions you are half way to getting it to run on Linux.   You’ll however want to install all the Wine DB and API’s that are associated with Wine to get it to work.  That includes but not limited to Q4wine, Playonlinux, Winetricks, All Wine Compatibility layers(Windows-Desktop-files also), Wine-binfmt  and the API layers that is associated with Wine.  I found sometimes they don’t automatically install these but they are necessary for several other games.

Install Graphics Drivers

Go to your driver manager app and make sure you have the GPU driver for your system.   I currently have a NVIDIA 1660 Super and an Intel 10-850 Core.   First I’d try the recommended but we’ll discuss this at the end.   Always download the recommended driver on Linux Mint but if you have a different Linux and want to download the NVIDIA drivers, check out the NVIDIA Unix Drivers for them to work with your system.  If you have an AMD GPU, you can visit the AMD website for your Linux Driver.  Once those are installed, you will probably need to reboot your system to make sure your drivers are active when playing on Steam or other games.   Each time there is an update, it will probably be a good idea to reboot just to make sure the drivers you want are being used by the system.

Install Steam

It seems Linux Mint 20.1 or some earlier version installs the Flathub version of Steam when they install Linux Mint.   Uninstall that version first,  I’ve found that it doesn’t do as a good as a job as the one you can get from the package manager.   I also found that it won’t run some games with Proton.   So that is the reason I say, just go ahead and uninstall it and install the real one.  This is the easy part of the installation.   Once done you are more than halfway there to be able to play your games like you want.

Download and Install Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Example of -FastLaunch

Once you have steam, You can now go ahead and download and install MSFS2020 into steam.   This will be a quick process.   Steam however will not allow you to download the game until you enable proton.  Go over to the Gear icon in steam and left click properties and go to Comparability tab.   I’d recommend trying Proton 5.13-6 first because that is what everyone else used to get it to work on their systems according to the ProtonDB. Once you do that, you’ll be able to download MSFS20 and install it.  Once installed, you’ll also want to add ‘-FastLaunch’ to the Launch options.    Once done with that, hit the little “X” button and try clicking the play button and seeing if it will run.

If it doesn’t work

Sometimes each system is a little bit different.   So I’ll talk about ways you can tweak it to get it to work on your system.    Some things to try:

  • Get a New or Older version of the GPU driver
  • Change the Proton version to a New or Older version or try the experimental version.
  • Check your Wine Settings(Although I didn’t have to do much with mine just install and try to run the q4wine once that was ran.   I didn’t do anything else but quit the program.)
  • Check the ProtoDB to see what everyone else has done to get the game to run.

I suggest making one change at a time and seeing if the game will run after the change.   If it is a GPU driver change, I suggest rebooting to make sure you are using the GPU driver you want to try to run with the program.  Also Don’t expect the game to run as smoothly as it does on Windows so be thoughtful when you are playing the game.   Sometimes there will be crashes and other things going on.  You can however try different configurations to see if you can resolve those issues also.  If you like this post please consider buying something from my affiliate list to support my blog and my time in write.

GTA 4 Causes fatal error mma10, how to fix it!!

Paul

[ad#ad2-left]After seeing all this happened I thought I would help people out on how to fix it.   This seems to be a DRM problem according to some reports.  Others are thinking it is the Securerom.  Anyways the problem seems to be with the Rockstar Social Club and not to log in to that.  That will fix the problem, you will at least be able to play the single player game.  This is a temporary fix till the developers fix in the update.  This will also fix the Steam version of the game.

Left 4 Dead Sneak Peak!

Paul

[ad#ad2-left]Yes they finally released the demo. According to my sources and I’ll quote:

Newell said: “We will be releasing demos for both the Xbox and for the PC. I don’t know what the date is for release on that, though. I think it’s going to contain the first part of one of the campaigns. I think it’ll probably be Hospital but I’m not sure. That’s a decision that Doug Lombardi is making.”

[Via Videogamer]

If you want to see the game screen shots you and preview the pictures all you need to do is go HERE.  You can also start pre-purchasing Left 4 Dead on The PC and be ready to play when it comes out. Watch the Video from Steam for Left 4 Dead Intro In English. You can also Gift the Game for the Holidays, I would like one to get and try it out so if you want to give me the Gift just send it to me via my email address.  According to Steam, you will haveto pre-purchase Left 4 Dead and then the Demo will be available for you a week before hand!! so that is one good thing!!  So go buy it and enjoy!!!  Also you will need to install Steam to enjoy the demo.

Google introduces the Androids G1 today!

Paul

[ad]

With the recent announcement of Apples earnings. So now that Google released this, is Apple going to be able to keep up the steam with the Iphone? Which phone are you going to buy the Iphone or the Android G1? So far T-mobile has did pre-orders on the phone now to see what the earnings are for this little adventure? Is it enough?

Go check it out and let me know what you think.