Playing Around with Steam In-Home Streaming
I'm not sure how long ago I qualified for the beta, but over the last couple of days I've had a go at the Steam in-home streaming feature that will apparently be bringing lots of added value to the ecosystem, allowing you to stream PC and Mac games to one another, and soon to computers running SteamOS.
It's a lovely idea, an elegant solution to move people from one platform to another while their library of linux games is small (though it doesn't address console players who don't already own gaming PCs) if it works.
Note the stats in the bottom left-hand corner.
As you can see, it's only giving me 16.95fps at 1200x800, this tech has a long way to go. It also didn't send audio along with the image, though I could hear my computer in the other room. It's worth noting that both computers are connected via gigabit ethernet and are joined by a single hub.
What I am impressed by however is the implementation. To get set up, I had to opt into the Steam beta and restart the client on both machines. Once that was done, both happily stayed signed in. The games on the server you're connected to appear in your installed games list as though they were local, and completely blend into the games you have installed on your local machine.
The full list of "installed" games might look like this:
Even though the list of games actually installed locally is more like this:
My impression of the feature is that it is in very early beta and has a lot farther to go, but since Sony and Nintendo have both brought market-ready local streaming to release, odds are that Valve will be able to figure out the technical hurdles. As someone who enjoys having a home server – and a silent living room – I really like the idea of keeping a big noisy gaming machine connected and headless in a seldom-used room while I game around the house on the TV or on my laptop.
Some vital stats:
Server
Late 2011 Mac Mini
OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
Gigabit Ethernet
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB
Client
Late 2012 13" MacBook Pro
OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
16GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
Gigabit Ethernet
2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB
The eagle-eyed of you may be wondering why I tested this by streaming from a weaker machine to a faster one, and I'd just say that a) my server is buried and headless and I didn't fancy taking it out to test this, especially since b) this is a perfectly valid use-case. My server has oodles of storage (~13TB) whereas my laptop only has 500GB, so I can install every possible Mac-ready Steam game in my library onto my server and have it ready to play any time I fancy without worrying about storage,