Tag: Steam Deck

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

Paul1 Reply

Live Audio Streaming Second Life

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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.

So you want to upgrade your SSD on the Steam Deck, huh?

Paul2 Replies
The Prices of Steam Deck

Upgrading is Possible

I’m not going to say it won’t be easy to do. It just depends on how much of knowledge you have to do this. I bought the 64gb Model because well it was the cheaper of the 3. I figured it would be cheaper to do it myself than to pay them to do it. I am looking now and think I did a great job with this because I didn’t have to spend the 600 dollars for the 512gb model. In fact there are more bigger kinds of the SSD that I can install that will go beyond the 512gb that they are selling. If you want to do this, I really suggest checking out the Steam Deck Teardown that the IFIXIT guys did. I simply love the idea of tearing it down and being able to MOD it, if I so choice.  I’m going to talk about the best choices you have to upgrade your storage in the Steam Deck.   These are just my recommendations on which ones will help you and save you money in the process.

Buy NVME 2230 30 mm SSDs

So we start to talk about the kind of SSD’s you will need to buy in order to upgrade your Steam Deck.   You will need to find SSDs that are one sided NVME.  They can not have chips on both sides of the card, there would be no room for it.   You’re going to look for the type you might want but here are some good options that I see on Amazon.

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SkHynix 256GB PCIe NVMe 2230 SSD for 31$

Here’s the first one that I recommend for anyone who might just want to upgrade to a little bit bigger size. This however will not give you as much room as you might want but it will give you enough room to start off with and then you can SD cards to do the rest.  As you can see this one will be a good deal for you right now.   You can quickly and easily upgrade your Steam Deck to a bigger storage.   It however isn’t the only one I would recommend.

Micron SSD 512GB M.2 2230 30mm NVMe PCIe 4.0 for 99$

Now here’s a great deal going from jusst paying 399$ pluss tax to 499$ Plus tax.  Saving you over 130$, if you just did it yourself.   So this one should fit Steam Deck and I don’t see any problems with it.  It is small enough and fast enough to use with the Steam Deck.  You won’t see it slowing you down as you are gaming on the Steam Deck.

SN530 m.2 2230 SSD 1TB NVMe PCIe For 184$

This seems to be the best deal around because you can get almost a 1 tb for the best amount of money.   The only problem with this one is you really only get 866gb of space and the rest is taken up by design of the chip.   I don’t know if you want that or not but at least this one is available to you to buy.  You might be able to find other 1tb that will get closer to the 1tb limit but not  many and they start to get more expensive.

2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD Gen 4.0 for 539$

Finally we get to this bad boy, it is a bit expensive for my tastes but at least this is a Samsungs SSD.  So it will be blazing fast but I don’t know if I would pay 500$ for a 2tb when you can easy get Micro SD’s for cheaper.  I guess those who can afford to pay it will most likely.  I am sure there will be other manufacturers who will come out with 2tb but for right now this one is the only one on Amazon and claims to be able to upgrade the Steam Deck.  I suspect your will only get like 1.7tb of space off this SSD but it will be massive.  If you have a lot of games, this would definately let you put them on the Steam Deck.

Installing the Steam OS

So you bought a bigger SSd and went to install it but you will need to install the Steam OS.  You can follower the instructions on how to create a Steam OS recovery USB drive.   I personally might go with my own and use CloneZilla and clone the hard drive and move it to the new one after you install the new SSD.   Then grab something like Gparted and expand the disk to the size you need that would be my recommendations so you don’t loose any of you games or have to reinstall the games that you have already installed.   You will need a USB stick that has the size you want to clone so if you have a 64gb then you will need one that is at least that big.  You can use a dock or something like that, See my previous post about Docks.  to use multiple USB sticks.  Hope this helps.  Did you find this informative, why not share it and let others know that it is possible to upgrade your Steam Deck.

How to move your Minecraft World from PC to SteamOS (Archlinux)

Paul1 Reply

Installing Minecraft

See Link here for more information

After you get done install Minecraft on your Steam deck you will then be able to log into your Minecraft Java Edition. I suggest setting updifferent version for the game if you have several different versions for example 1.16.2 and 18.1 and Maybe even 1.19.0+. I’ve found this to be the very easy to use and keep your from having to log into to your minecraft java edition. Once you have Micraft installed and ready to played. You really should go ahead create test world so you can verify that it is working properly. Once done you’ll want to process to the next step.

Zipping your saved worlds

This next step is important because you never know what could happen. You’ll want to hit “Win + R” and type in “%appdata%\.minecraft” while you are logged into your Windows device. This should bring your to C:\users\[loginID]\Appdata\.minecraft. Once there you will want to navigate to saves directory. You’ll find in most times it is there unless you have designated another location in the Minecraft Java launcher where to go. I’m going to assume you know where your save directory and we’ll talk about what you will need to do next.  I’d use something like 7zip or even Windows Zipping utility.  For the People who are absolutely beginners with this.   I recommend copying these to a USB and then copying them to the Steam Deck that way or you could use the microSD card if you have have a MicroSD card reader to move the zip files over.   Once you have zip the worlds you want to play on you Steam Deck.   You basically just want to zip the whole directory of the world name for example if you have a Test World on your Windows computer, it will probably be something like “Test World” folder.  Zip the whole directory up and copy it over.   Don’t change anything when it get’s zipped up.

If you have multiple worlds and have them set up with different version.   I’d suggest zipping them up and creating folders with the different version onto the USB or MicroSD card.  So when you create and import them into PolyMC you will know which versions you will need to create in Java PolyMC.

Importing world into PolyMC

Once you have them zip files copied over or at least installed on the MicroSD card and inserted into the the Steam Deck.    You are going to want to start PolyMC in Desktop mode if you are using this on the Steam Deck.   One you run it you’ll want to view the worlds:

View Worlds _ PolyMC

Then once you do that, The next screen you will want to click Add (saved world).

Add worlds as Zip files

Once you hit Add you will then want to go to the directory on the MicroSD card or USB drive or Where ever you moved the zip files. Once you find it and click OPEN. It should start to add it to the PolyMC World. If you created the right version you will not have to worry about it when you start the game. After Adding all the worlds you want to play with, you can then get out of Steam Deck Desktop mode and go back to the the Steam OS and play your game that you were playing on your PC. I haven’t tried moving these back to the PC or keeping them syncorized but at least you can play your favorite worlds on Steam Deck.

Like this little quick tutorial. Why not share it and tell people so more people can play Minecraft and or use your worlds you were using it on the PC. This will only work for the JAVA version of Minecraft. Bedrock will probably not work, I haven’t tried or thought about trying it for Steam Deck. Hope this helps. Have a Good Monday Morning.

How to install Steam Games faster than ever on the Steam Deck!

Paul


The Steam Deck Rocks

I first got this today but I have so many games on Steam, You’d think it would take very long.   The problem is that you probably don’t know this little tip to help you get your steam games onto the steam deck quicker.   I am going to talk about a few ways you could increase your download speed on the Steam Deck.   This won’t be a hard lesson for some but it will be an eye opening lesson for others.    The real question is how I did it and how can you make downloading your games much faster and easier.   The simple truth is I used a USB-C Dongle From Amazon to do that.   Most of the time downloading from WIFI can be fast but it can also be slow due to the limits of bandwidth on the WIFI network.  You can download way faster on wired than you can on wireless.   That will always be the case.

Disconnect from WIFI

This is something else I found out is that if you didn’t disconnect from the WIFI in the steam settings it would still be slow to download while connected to the dongle.   After disconnecting from the WIFI my speed downloads jumped up and I could get those really big games installed in half the time.  This is one of those little tips no one told you about with the Steam Deck.  To disconnect from WIFI when you are using a USB-C Dongle or a USB-C DOCK. A USB-C Dock is just a bigger and bulker version of the dongle because you can plug in keyboards and mice into and use it like a computer. This is definitely something I will be trying later on. I am quite curious to see if I can plug in a joystick or use a Bluetooth joystick to play games from my television set in the living room.

Streaming Games

If you plan on streaming games to another part of the house with your Steam Deck, you’ll want to also plug it in and make sure that you have enough bandwidth to stream games from your computer to the Steam Deck.   I think this one will also apply for the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld also, if you plan to stream with the Logitech gaming handheld it will work a lot better if you can get a hard connection with that like you can with the Steam Deck.  

Download speeds

The only draw back I can see right now is the download speeds are limited to how fast the NVME or the SD card you are using can be written to.  So that may be a draw back from some people who got the slow SD cards that are barely able to keep up.   The best kind I can suggest are the SD cards that are designed for quick read and writes the ones that are in the 160MB/s are probably you best bet but you can use the 100MB/s read and write speeds if you like.  It will still be fast enough to play games on and will make your gaming experience better no matter which one you uses.

These are just a few things I’ve noticed once I got my Steam deck.   I will talk more about it in the coming weeks but I thought this would help other install their games or stream their games faster.   What else do you want to know about the Steam Deck, why not comment below and let me know what you interested in knowing or finding out?

 

No more Stadia says Google, and user have a chance for a refund!

Paul
Google Stadia

Google calls a stop to gaming

Google told developers and other that the gaming service will end at the beginning of 2023 and all user can ask for a refund of the the gaming system. This comes as a shock to most because no one saw this coming from what I am seeing around the the internet.    My son even both the Stadia when it came out and now he is going to ask for a refund after the 2 years he’s been using it.   I feel like this was due to the cost of constantly fighting all the other gaming consoles out there.   From Nintendo, to Xbox, to even PC gaming that people were doing.    Developers couldn’t keep up from my understanding and even if they did the customers were there to buy the Stadia as much as they bought other gaming consoles because of the wide variety of games available.  In their blog post about this, they say:

We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center

Logitech Launches G Cloud Streaming Hand Held

I’ve talked  about this last week about the new G cloud streaming hand held system.  I am unsure how this will evolve or how well this will work, but I still believe the Steam Deck is better than the Logitech version.  I’ve got the Steam Deck coming my way and I will talk about it even more to tell you what everything you can do with the steam deck.  According the Logitech:

CLOUD requires a cloud subscription service sold separately to work as intended, such as NVIDIA GeForce Now or Xbox Game Pass.

Each cloud subscription will cost you depending on where you you go and who you are using.   Steam can be streamed to the Logitech hand held but I am dubious as to how well this will work with the current needing to be connected to the internet to do that.

Steam Deck will like last

I don’t know about any others, unlike the Nintendo Switch, or the PSP there will always be those who will play those.  There is the OnexPlayer but that seems like paying to much for the the player at least on Amazon.  They have so many different players and other thing you can you do with these systems but I am not sure if the price would be worth those gaming systems.   You can visit the OnexPlayer Official Site but I am more interested in a gaming system that can be bought for the ones who want to use it.   There are many different hand held gaming systems that rang from 300$ to over 1,200$.   Steam Deck is right in the sweet spot for people who might want to play around with the system and use it for what it is for.  You can play offline and still use the online stuff for when you can get a internet connection.   I’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks, hacks and how to’s for those who might want to use the Steam Deck to it’s highest potential.  You can do a whole lot more than you can with any other Hand Held gaming systems for this price range.   I know I will enjoy this system immensely.

What would you like me to talk about the Steam deck?  Want to know how to hack the steam deck and install even more games?  Want to use Steam Deck as a portal computer?  These are where I am thinking of going to do?  What games would you like me to try to do?  Minecraft, Or maybe Epic Games, Or even Battle.net Games.  Wouldn’t that be nice to do?  Stay Tuned.