Remote LAN/WAN gaming with Parsec

[RoyMi6]

Not seeing this mentioned anywhere...

Basically it's Steam "In Home Streaming" without the Steam requirement. I've only tested it on LAN between my main gaming PC and my laptop and it works great.

The added advantage is that they feel their technology is low latency enough that they market it as a piece of software that you can install on a remote computer (like an Amazon AWS instance) and use the horsepower of a remote computer to then stream to something low power (like a Raspberry Pi3) with latency that's sub 20ms (i.e. 60fps)

They go into a little detail about how they're essentially avoiding touching the CPU at every step to reduce latency in this article: https://blog.parsecgaming.com/description-of-parsec-technology-b2738dcc3842

Given that it's free it's worth trying. Download the server/client (it's one install) from their website (https://parsecgaming.com/) on your main gaming rig and set it up as a host.

Then install the same client on your laptop or low powered device. Open up the client on your low powered device and click connect. Job done.

Having tested it briefly it really is very low latency. Like indistinguishable latency on local network, and from my short experience I thought it was better than my Steam Link. Only then did I find this article (written by Parsec mind!) that basically confirms what I was seeing: https://blog.parsecgaming.com/steam-in-home-streaming-latency-test-versus-parsec-7884144b29f1

This image sums it up: Top is the framerate over time using Steam, bottom is the framerate using Parsec.

Another bonus... Adding online COOP to local COOP games: https://blog.parsecgaming.com/localcoopgamesyoucanplayonlinewithparsec-218d51126137

Yeah, so rather neat and simple remote desktop access application that does run well.

I quite fancy trying to see if I'm still capable of thrashing my friend at Nidhogg while he hosts. That would be the real test in my mind!

 

[Narj]

I can't help thinking that the Steam Link is barely powerful enough for its purpose. I had a lot of fun with it but decided to just get a mini-ITX PC for the living room because the lag was noticeable in games like Rocket League even on LAN.

This does look interesting though and might be good for remote gaming while working away from home for example. Any stats on bitrate while streaming?

EDIT: read the article - good luck getting 30Mbps from a hotel. 3-4 maybe though which I would expect for acceptable Netflix style 1080p quality depending on their codec?

 

[RoyMi6]

I can't help thinking that the Steam Link is barely powerful enough for its purpose. I had a lot of fun with it but decided to just get a mini-ITX PC for the living room because the lag was noticeable in games like Rocket League even on LAN.

This does look interesting though and might be good for remote gaming while working away from home for example. Any stats on bitrate while streaming?

User configurable (https://parsecgaming.com/config#video-quality) and defaults to 10Mbps. Little more info in this thread (https://support.parsecgaming.com/hc...92-Advanced-settings-question-encoder-bitrate)

 

[RoyMi6]

Right, ok, wow.

I've tried a lot of WAN and LAN based streaming things, but this is easily the best so far for LAN stuff.

I can actually play CS:GO on my Mac (2.4Ghz WiFi) connected to my main PC (Ethernet). It's something I've never bothered even trying my Steam Link as IMO there's a couple of things that didn't work well enough to know that it wasn't worth trying before (although I may now have to to double check!)

From my testing in the past with Steam link I found that I needed to either play 3rd person games (rather than first person) or with a controller (rather than mouse and keyboard) to mitigate the unresponsive feeling that you get with the input lag.

But... given how well this works I'm just away to fire up CS:GO on the steam link... we'll see how well that goes!

EDIT: Dam, scratch that - the steam link is performing much better than it used to. Obviously a couple of years of updates will have that effect but running my Mac laptop on Parsec via WiFi and the Steam Link on Ethernet side by side (yes, Parsec can be running while you use your Steam Link/In Home Streaming) both are neck and neck in terms of responsiveness.

Anecdotally however, I did see more hiccups on the Steam Link. Almost like the odd dropped frame here and there that I've not noticed while using Parsec (as yet).

Next thing to test is remote steaming. I'll leave my PC on and remote in from work tomorrow.

 

[Narj]

I wonder if tweaks like disabling nagle's algorithm will further improve performance here. It's a common trick when dealing with latency sensitive apps so don't see why it wouldn't work for gaming.

 

[RoyMi6]

As far as I'm aware isn't nagle's algorithm already disabled/enabled on a per application basis? The only thing I remember about it from networking as part of my programming degree was that it's not necessarily a catch all when disabling these type of things. Feel free to try it though.

- EDIT: A quick google shows that while everyone is keen to show you how to make the change, no one has actually shown data that proves it makes anything "better" in terms of latency when playing games. I'd imagine that's either because it doesn't, or any games/services that would benefit from it have it disabled already. While I've not done much network programming for games as a programmer I knew about it in general and it's something I would test if I was developing a latency dependent application. I'd hope developers that are literally writing an application that avoids calls to the CPU while coding most things up in shaders have had the foresight to extend their testing to the NIC configuration as well. I could be wrong though, it might be a system level option that we do need to disable. Just given that we're working in milliseconds I can't test it. -

Popped into work a little early to run a quick test...

My home PC gaming rig is still on.

I connected to it via one PC at work, and it actually works quite well. Like... well enough to be usable in CS:GO vs bots, maybe even online...

Crazy thing? I fired up the Parsec client on a second computer in the office and connected to the first computer in my office... so I'm literally playing CS:GO like this:

Home Computer > Ethernet > Internet > Ethernet > Work Computer 1 > Ethernet > Work Computer 2.

I can still kill expert bots but it's starting to suffer. Image quality is massively affected and I did get killed a couple of times where it felt like I didn't have a response in terms of my reaction time.

 

[Narj]

snip

I'm not a programmer but I've seen disabling it on a NIC that was dedicated for an app fix real-life latency/delay issues after analysing packet captures. In a PCAP you can see Nagle working by way of the consistent delays introduced. Thinking about it and looking at the stats it may already be accounted for like you say.

It's worth a shot I suppose but would need packet capture comparisons before and after to check it makes a difference. Might mess up other stuff.