52: It's an App Basket!

00:00SPEAKER- What's the, what's the old saying, red sky at morning.

00:02SPEAKERSay sailors take warning.

00:05SPEAKER- Just don't ever go outside, Brad.

00:07SPEAKER- Red sky at night, sailors delight.

00:09SPEAKER- You're still fucked.

00:10SPEAKER- What does it mean? - It's bad.

00:11SPEAKER- What if, what's the old saying for red sky all the time?

00:15SPEAKEROh my God, the world is ending.

00:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I realized when that happened the other day,

00:21SPEAKERif you don't know what we're talking about in the Bay Area

00:23SPEAKERand a lot of the West Coast, the sky was blood red

00:26SPEAKERfor most of the day on Tuesday?

00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that was Tuesday.

00:30SPEAKERSo Oregon got that way worse than we did.

00:33SPEAKERThe red still, like if you saw some of the photos

00:35SPEAKERand videos going around on Twitter, I mean it looked like,

00:37SPEAKERdo you know what it looks like in "Breath of the Wild"

00:39SPEAKERwhen like you tick over like the blood moon

00:42SPEAKERand all the enemies respawn and stuff?

00:44SPEAKERIt looked like that.

00:45SPEAKERLike everything was just red.

00:47SPEAKER- So that's what it was like here all day on...

00:50SPEAKER- That was Tuesday.

00:51SPEAKER- It was Tuesday, yeah.

00:52SPEAKER- And then Wednesday was the day that I, I don't know,

00:54SPEAKERyou're like what, eight, 10 miles south of here?

00:56SPEAKERSomething like that? - Yeah, eight or nine

00:57SPEAKERmiles south, yeah. - I don't know how it was

00:58SPEAKERfor you, but I got up.

01:01SPEAKERSo I woke up pretty early on Wednesday, like 6 a.m.

01:05SPEAKERGet up, I'm in here drinking my coffee, it's usually dark.

01:09SPEAKER7 a.m. rolls around, eight a.m. rolls around, nine, 10,

01:13SPEAKERstill just as dark.

01:15SPEAKER- So our street lights were on all day on Tuesday.

01:18SPEAKER- Yeah. - Like all of them.

01:19SPEAKER- Yes.

01:21SPEAKER- When I went out in the front yard, it was dusk,

01:24SPEAKERit was like late dusk pretty much at one o'clock

01:27SPEAKERin the afternoon. - That's about right,

01:29SPEAKERI would say, like until about noon, for like most

01:32SPEAKERof the morning, I would say it was like about the brightness

01:35SPEAKERof a full moon outside or just a little more.

01:38SPEAKER- Yeah, like a really bright full moon.

01:39SPEAKER- Yeah, like it was pitch black in this house.

01:41SPEAKERLike I posted a little video on our Discord

01:44SPEAKERof my living room and I couldn't see shit

01:46SPEAKERin my living room without any lights on.

01:48SPEAKER- We had to turn on all the lights

01:50SPEAKERand my daughter was so freaked out by the whole thing

01:53SPEAKERthat she moved her desk into her bedroom

01:55SPEAKERand shut the curtains and shut the door.

01:57SPEAKERShe was just like, I just stayed up really late tonight, dad.

02:00SPEAKER- Yeah, why stop there, man?

02:02SPEAKERLike build the full on the bed fort,

02:04SPEAKERbuild the pillar fort and just get all the way under there.

02:07SPEAKER- I mean, I couldn't sleep.

02:11SPEAKERI was so messed up on that night

02:13SPEAKERfrom like just not knowing what time it was all day

02:16SPEAKERthat I ended up going to sleep at like 5 a.m., I think.

02:19SPEAKERI just basically was laying there, I watched TV, I read,

02:23SPEAKERI watched more TV, I read, I played some games,

02:25SPEAKERI read, I read, I read, and I finally fell asleep.

02:30SPEAKERIt's weird, the next day was also,

02:32SPEAKERlike had it not been for the blood sky the day before,

02:35SPEAKERthe day after would have been also very bad,

02:37SPEAKERbut it was yellow.

02:38SPEAKER- Yeah, that was yesterday.

02:39SPEAKERThat was, yeah, it was brighter,

02:41SPEAKERbut it was so yellow outside, it's just crazy.

02:43SPEAKERI don't think that human psyche

02:45SPEAKERis not built to see stuff like this.

02:49SPEAKER- Well, it's interesting, I read a thing yesterday

02:52SPEAKERin ProPublica maybe, I can't remember,

02:54SPEAKERabout like why we're having this kind of wildfires,

02:57SPEAKERand basically the TLDR is, for the last 40 years,

03:01SPEAKERwe haven't been letting anything burn,

03:03SPEAKERif it's not, if it doesn't get out,

03:04SPEAKERlike we don't do any controlled burns.

03:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:08SPEAKER- Why not?

03:09SPEAKER- And because people,

03:11SPEAKERbecause occasionally they get out of control

03:13SPEAKERand they burn stuff down and then somebody's liable.

03:15SPEAKER- Great.

03:16SPEAKER- Is what it seems like the TLDR is.

03:18SPEAKER- This is way more mundane and annoying than I expected.

03:21SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I mean, so there's obviously

03:26SPEAKERa climate change component too,

03:27SPEAKER'cause we're in the middle of 10 years of drought,

03:29SPEAKERand we're at the end of 10 years of drought,

03:31SPEAKERwhich is taking a situation that was already bad

03:34SPEAKERand turning it into a tinderbox, basically.

03:37SPEAKERBut like the strategy for fixing this

03:39SPEAKERis that you burn small patches in large checkerboards

03:43SPEAKERso that there are some natural firebreaks and stuff.

03:46SPEAKERAnd anyway, yeah, it's a mess.

03:50SPEAKER- Is there anything that's not a mess right now?

03:52SPEAKER- You know what's not a mess?

03:53SPEAKERIn-home game streaming.

03:54SPEAKER- Oh, great.

03:55SPEAKERLet's talk about something truly important.

03:58SPEAKER- I gotta roll the music first though.

04:00SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:20SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

04:35SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

04:37SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:38SPEAKER- Brad.

04:39SPEAKER- How you doing, Brad?

04:40SPEAKER- I'm okay.

04:41SPEAKER- Doing okay.

04:42SPEAKER- How are you?

04:43SPEAKER- I would describe myself as doing the best that I can.

04:45SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

04:46SPEAKER- That's an optimistic, uplifting, positive spin.

04:51SPEAKER- Well, when you're inside my head,

04:52SPEAKERit doesn't feel that optimistic,

04:53SPEAKERbut things are going great.

04:55SPEAKER- Fake it till you make it.

04:57SPEAKER- Yeah, something like that.

04:58SPEAKERLook, I am very grateful right now.

05:02SPEAKERIt's funny, we were talking about this

05:03SPEAKERin the house the other day,

05:04SPEAKERbut this is the first time since my daughter was born

05:07SPEAKERthat everybody in the house is into the same games.

05:10SPEAKER'Cause Gina is an occasional gamer.

05:14SPEAKERLike she'll play if there's a new burnout

05:16SPEAKERor a new need for speed,

05:17SPEAKERshe might dip into that a little bit.

05:19SPEAKER- Okay, those are core games.

05:21SPEAKER- Yeah, but like this year,

05:23SPEAKERsince the quarantine started with Animal Crossing

05:25SPEAKERand Fall Guys and Tony Hawk,

05:28SPEAKERthere's a bunch of games that like we're all playing,

05:31SPEAKERmy daughter included, which has been a tr...

05:33SPEAKERLike it's really cool watching my kid

05:37SPEAKERlike be into a dead genre game like Tony Hawk

05:42SPEAKERin the same way that I was for 10 years

05:44SPEAKERfrom like 1998 until 2007 or whatever, right?

05:48SPEAKERLike it's good to know that like she likes that

05:55SPEAKEReven though it's not like the new hotness.

05:57SPEAKERThis makes me happy.

05:57SPEAKER- Vindicates your old man memories.

05:59SPEAKERThat sounds like a nice way

06:01SPEAKERto maybe remove a little bit of the friction

06:02SPEAKERwhen you're stuck inside for months on end

06:04SPEAKERwith the same people.

06:06SPEAKER- It definitely helps that we all have stuff to do

06:08SPEAKERboth together and apart.

06:10SPEAKERAnd like having like a little meditative animal practice,

06:13SPEAKERanimal crossing practice every day has been really good.

06:15SPEAKERLike what are you looking for?

06:17SPEAKEROh, your blue roses finally grew.

06:18SPEAKERThat's amazing.

06:19SPEAKERCongratulations.

06:20SPEAKERAnd like, you know.

06:21SPEAKER- Okay, wait for it.

06:22SPEAKERI cannot wait for animal practice coming Fall 2021.

06:26SPEAKER- God, what if you're like a doctor

06:27SPEAKERfor the Animal Crossing animals?

06:29SPEAKER- Ooh.

06:30SPEAKER- So, okay, this is totally off topic

06:32SPEAKERand it's not about game streaming at all,

06:33SPEAKERbut on the Animal Crossing front,

06:36SPEAKERlike my daughter has made a bunch of alt characters

06:38SPEAKERnow that she's built houses for

06:40SPEAKERthat are like doctors and teachers and librarians.

06:43SPEAKERAnd she's building like a little town full of people

06:45SPEAKERto service the needs of the animals.

06:46SPEAKER- Wait, do you mean all player characters?

06:48SPEAKER- She's making alt player characters.

06:49SPEAKERShe's like, how do I make other accounts on my Switch?

06:52SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, you do it like this.

06:53SPEAKERShe's like, wait, I'll show you later.

06:55SPEAKERAnd so she has like a teacher version of her

06:57SPEAKERand a librarian version of her and a doctor version of her.

07:00SPEAKER- And that's how you very quickly found out

07:02SPEAKERhow many accounts you can make on a Nintendo Switch.

07:04SPEAKER- Well, we haven't reached that limit yet,

07:06SPEAKERbut I'm sure it's gonna anger me when it happens.

07:09SPEAKERBut yeah, it's like having an open-ended game like that

07:13SPEAKERwith a kid who's cooped up all the time

07:15SPEAKERand has a lot of free time

07:17SPEAKERand can't leave the house at all right now,

07:19SPEAKEReven to go in the backyard.

07:22SPEAKERYeah, she's impressing me with her ability

07:24SPEAKERto find new ways to play with something

07:26SPEAKERthat's relatively structured.

07:27SPEAKER- That's innovative and that's also very community minded.

07:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought so.

07:31SPEAKER- When you first mentioned being a doctor

07:32SPEAKERat Animal Crossing, it just made me envision

07:34SPEAKERwhat the Tom Nook HMO would be like.

07:36SPEAKER- Look, Tom Nook gives interest-free loans

07:39SPEAKERto strangers.

07:40SPEAKER- Now I'm just angry, so we should move on.

07:45SPEAKER- So we were talking a couple of weeks ago

07:47SPEAKERabout streaming games.

07:49SPEAKER- Yes, but not like you think.

07:52SPEAKER- Yeah, we're not talking about X-Cloud.

07:54SPEAKERWe're not talking about Stadia.

07:57SPEAKERWe're not talking about GeForce Now.

07:58SPEAKER- Yes.

08:00SPEAKER- I mean, we can, they all use the same basic technology,

08:02SPEAKERbut if you have a PC running games

08:06SPEAKERor a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One,

08:10SPEAKERyou can play whatever you want

08:12SPEAKERkind of anywhere in the world in a lot of cases.

08:15SPEAKER- Seems like it's getting to that point.

08:16SPEAKERBut yeah, talking about the underlying tech is actually,

08:19SPEAKERI mean, granted, that's kind of what we do on this podcast,

08:21SPEAKERbut that's kind of what I'm excited to talk about here

08:23SPEAKERbecause until the last, I don't know, 12 months or so,

08:28SPEAKERI wanted nothing to do with playing games remotely.

08:31SPEAKER- So I've been using a Steam link off and on

08:35SPEAKERto play single player games in the living room

08:38SPEAKERfor probably since maybe six months

08:42SPEAKERafter the Steam link came out.

08:43SPEAKERI can't remember when they released that.

08:44SPEAKERI didn't look that up.

08:45SPEAKERIt was like 2015 maybe.

08:47SPEAKER- Steam link box.

08:48SPEAKER- 'Cause '14, 2015.

08:49SPEAKER- When you search for Steam link now,

08:50SPEAKERit just pulls up that app thing.

08:53SPEAKERWas it like 2015 maybe?

08:55SPEAKER- It seems, sorry, it was around the time I left testing.

08:58SPEAKERIt wasn't a great experience at launch

09:00SPEAKERunless you were on wired.

09:02SPEAKERAnd then some stuff changed

09:04SPEAKERwith the way the graphics drivers work.

09:05SPEAKERSo then it suddenly got pretty good.

09:07SPEAKER- And maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here,

09:08SPEAKERbut that's exactly what I want to know about is

09:10SPEAKERI want to know what changed

09:11SPEAKERbecause when my early experiences with this stuff

09:14SPEAKERand also just conceptually,

09:16SPEAKERlike I don't want artifacting.

09:17SPEAKERI don't want latency.

09:18SPEAKERI just want to play a game processed locally

09:20SPEAKERon the box under my TV or next to my desk

09:23SPEAKERand like leave me alone.

09:24SPEAKERGod damn it, I'm shaking my cane at you right now.

09:28SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

09:29SPEAKERBut like at some point, and we'll get into some of these,

09:31SPEAKERlike the parsecs and the mood lights and so forth,

09:34SPEAKERlike it got really good.

09:37SPEAKER- Well, so in the old days,

09:41SPEAKERthe old, old days when you would try to do this,

09:43SPEAKERit would just capture your game screen

09:45SPEAKERlike OBS does if it captures the whole display,

09:47SPEAKERwhich is not particularly latency friendly.

09:51SPEAKERSo you would have a good, you know, you'd take a game

09:54SPEAKERwhere you already have a little bit of input latency,

09:55SPEAKERwhich we talked about a lot last week.

09:57SPEAKERAnd then you would add,

09:59SPEAKERactually we didn't talk about that at all, did we?

10:01SPEAKERDid we talk about reflex a little bit?

10:02SPEAKER- Yeah, we did, yeah.

10:03SPEAKER- Okay.

10:04SPEAKERBut then you add more latency for capturing the frames

10:08SPEAKERas they're going through the frame buffer,

10:09SPEAKERand then you have video encoding latency.

10:12SPEAKERAnd it like, it basically didn't work,

10:13SPEAKEReven if you had hardware video encode.

10:15SPEAKERIt was, it was, it was.

10:17SPEAKER- That's just too many steps, right?

10:18SPEAKER- Yeah, well, it was for games like,

10:20SPEAKERlike a Bethesda RPG is a great example,

10:22SPEAKERbecause like you can play a Bethesda RPG

10:25SPEAKERwith 20, 50 milliseconds of input lag and you're fine.

10:28SPEAKER- Yes.

10:29SPEAKER- But if you try to play Spelunky or Dead Cells

10:32SPEAKERor something that requires, or like a Ghost of Tsushima

10:36SPEAKERor something that requires some timing, Dark Souls,

10:39SPEAKERit's not going to work.

10:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:41SPEAKER- And one of the things that happened is Nvidia,

10:44SPEAKERwhen they started doing streaming with the shield devices,

10:48SPEAKERusing GeForce Experience as a server,

10:50SPEAKERadded this frame buffer capture.

10:52SPEAKERSo it's NvFPC and basically captures the frame buffer,

10:55SPEAKERthe last place that the picture goes

10:58SPEAKERbefore it gets blasted out to the monitor

11:00SPEAKERand sends it without, without hitting OpenGL or Direct3D,

11:04SPEAKERwithout any of the inner,

11:05SPEAKERwithout involving any of the other APIs.

11:09SPEAKERAnd you can do it regardless of the driver

11:11SPEAKERof the application.

11:13SPEAKERSo like, if you have say a Windows render model,

11:18SPEAKERthe, you know, the Metro app style games,

11:19SPEAKERlike Gears of War 5 was on the PC,

11:22SPEAKERit can grab that even if it's not,

11:24SPEAKEReven if it's using Vulkan or whatever.

11:26SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

11:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:28SPEAKER- And that's just something that the application ties into.

11:31SPEAKER- So the app, yeah, it's application independent,

11:35SPEAKERAPI independent, it only works in full screen mode.

11:38SPEAKER- Okay.

11:39SPEAKER- So, 'cause for a while in the olden times,

11:42SPEAKERyour best bet was to actually run your game in a window

11:45SPEAKERif you wanted the Steam link to work

11:47SPEAKERbecause of the way it was capturing that.

11:48SPEAKERThat was when it was either using IFR, Nvidia IFR,

11:51SPEAKERwhich I don't know what IFR stands for,

11:53SPEAKERbut it was basically it would,

11:58SPEAKERcould capture a single application in a window.

12:01SPEAKERIt required a little bit,

12:02SPEAKERit was a little fiddlier in terms of some apps

12:04SPEAKERjust wouldn't work because of the way they were,

12:06SPEAKERthey were rendering the frames.

12:09SPEAKERAnd that was how, that's how Steam does

12:12SPEAKERwindowed mode applications on the Steam link

12:15SPEAKERand the Steam link, Steam, Steam link apps now.

12:20SPEAKERBut yeah, it's like, it's not,

12:23SPEAKERthere's not, there's a lot of rocket science here

12:26SPEAKERin that it is a very complicated, difficult thing

12:28SPEAKERthat people are doing.

12:29SPEAKERBut for somebody who wants to have a PC in their office

12:32SPEAKERand not hooked up to their TV,

12:34SPEAKERit's pretty easy to set up these days.

12:37SPEAKER- So what's the best way to approach this?

12:39SPEAKERLike there's, I guess, like we could start

12:41SPEAKERwith the older solutions for this,

12:43SPEAKERbut they're kind of profoundly obsolete at this point,

12:47SPEAKERI think.

12:49SPEAKERLike there is the original Steam link box

12:52SPEAKERand you know, like the PS4 has got remote play,

12:54SPEAKERbut the PS4 came out seven years ago.

12:57SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

12:58SPEAKER- But so the PS4 works because it has hardware and code,

13:02SPEAKERPS4 and Xbox One work because they have hardware and code

13:04SPEAKERfor H.264.

13:06SPEAKER- Right, it's the same hardware that they use

13:08SPEAKERto constantly record your gameplay, right?

13:10SPEAKER- Exactly.

13:11SPEAKER- In fact, I think they, I think the PS4 at least,

13:13SPEAKERmaybe the Xbox as well, like straight up pops up a message,

13:16SPEAKERI think, I want to say it,

13:17SPEAKERor maybe it's buried in there somewhere,

13:19SPEAKERbut there is some messaging somewhere

13:21SPEAKERwhen you use remote play on PS4 that says like,

13:22SPEAKER"Hey, game recording will be disabled

13:24SPEAKERwhile you're using remote play."

13:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and like, so remote play,

13:28SPEAKERI know people who like stream

13:30SPEAKERand don't have a capture card use PS4 or Xbox remote play,

13:35SPEAKERand to set those up, basically you download an app,

13:38SPEAKERor if you're on a Windows 10 machine,

13:39SPEAKERyou have the Xbox app built in

13:41SPEAKERand you have to connect them to the device,

13:44SPEAKERand then you can just fire it up remotely

13:45SPEAKERand it pops up in a little window,

13:47SPEAKERthe game pops up in a little window on your desktop.

13:49SPEAKER- Yeah, and it works.

13:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it's fine.

13:52SPEAKER- It's been useful for me to have that on the PS4 occasionally

13:54SPEAKERto do something I need to do

13:55SPEAKERwhile I'm in here working in the other room,

13:57SPEAKERbut there's enough artifacting, there's enough latency,

14:00SPEAKEReven over a wired network that I wouldn't,

14:03SPEAKERI would never use it for something I truly cared about.

14:05SPEAKER- So it's funny, I use it to do screenshots

14:09SPEAKERand stuff like that when I need to take some screenshots

14:11SPEAKERof VR games, it's way easier than the built-in tools.

14:17SPEAKERIt adds more latency than plugging into a capture card

14:20SPEAKERand trying to play in a PC window, which is noticeable.

14:25SPEAKER- Yeah, like God of War, I had trouble playing,

14:27SPEAKERSpider-Man was fine 'cause the timing windows

14:29SPEAKERwere pretty generous on that,

14:31SPEAKERbut something that you need to do parries or something on,

14:34SPEAKERlike you couldn't play Sekiro on the PS4 streaming.

14:37SPEAKER- And I assume that's really no more complicated

14:40SPEAKERthan it's just seven-year-old hardware

14:42SPEAKERand probably the stack, the software stack

14:46SPEAKERhas probably not evolved that much in that time either, right?

14:49SPEAKER- My guess would be that there's no equivalent

14:51SPEAKERof the frame buffer grab for this.

14:54SPEAKER'Cause I mean, if you think about it, it's not something,

14:56SPEAKERlike the other side of this is that

14:58SPEAKERfrom a technology perspective, Wi-Fi,

15:00SPEAKERwhen these consoles came out, wasn't good enough to do this

15:03SPEAKERand they're all 802.11n consoles.

15:05SPEAKERI mean, I guess the Pro and the X are AC maybe.

15:09SPEAKER- I actually don't know about that.

15:12SPEAKERI'd be surprised if they are.

15:13SPEAKERI mean, I could look it up if we really care, but.

15:16SPEAKER- I mean, but the point is that, like...

15:19SPEAKER- Oh, it's in on the Pro.

15:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so then the Series X might be AC,

15:24SPEAKERbut realistically you're not gonna have the performance

15:27SPEAKERon end to street.

15:28SPEAKERSo the other thing is you need to have faster internet.

15:31SPEAKERAnd in most people's houses, that's gonna be AC wireless,

15:35SPEAKERwhich is fine for 1080p streaming.

15:38SPEAKERIf you wanna go higher and there are some options now

15:41SPEAKERthat'll let you do 4K, when we tested Moonlight,

15:45SPEAKERwere you doing 4K or were you doing 1080p?

15:48SPEAKER- 1080p. - Okay.

15:49SPEAKERYou can do 4K with Moonlight now.

15:51SPEAKER- Wow. - Which is bonkers, right?

15:54SPEAKERThe 4K up to 120 frames per second, I think.

15:56SPEAKER- That's pretty wild.

15:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it's an interesting,

16:02SPEAKERlike you can have a really compelling gaming experience

16:05SPEAKERwhere the hardware lives in your garage

16:08SPEAKERand it doesn't make noise or stuff in your house

16:10SPEAKERand you just have this remote gaming thing

16:13SPEAKERthat lives someplace else in your house.

16:14SPEAKER- That sounds kinda nice.

16:16SPEAKER- Right up until you have to go plug a USB stick

16:18SPEAKERinto it for something.

16:19SPEAKER- I mean, look, I was gonna say the downside of all of this

16:22SPEAKERis that at some point you're gonna have to probably get up

16:24SPEAKERand walk into the room and mash some buttons

16:25SPEAKERbecause it's a pain in the ass.

16:28SPEAKER- It's never foolproof.

16:29SPEAKER- It adds a fair amount of jank to your gaming experience,

16:32SPEAKERwhich a lot of people don't want.

16:34SPEAKER- So before we get into the modern solutions,

16:36SPEAKERcan we talk about the original Steam Link just a little bit?

16:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a cool box.

16:40SPEAKERI still have two of them plugged in.

16:41SPEAKER- Okay, so this is very self-serving,

16:43SPEAKERbut the main reason I wanna bring it up

16:46SPEAKERis that I bought one for like 12 bucks a year or two ago,

16:49SPEAKERa couple of years ago, still sitting in the drawer.

16:52SPEAKER- Yeah, your house is like human HDMI cable.

16:55SPEAKER- I do, yeah, like I don't even know.

16:57SPEAKERI bought it 'cause it was $12,

16:58SPEAKERnot because I have a use case for it,

16:59SPEAKERbut that's kind of why I bring it up.

17:00SPEAKERLike there's really, it doesn't seem like there's that much

17:02SPEAKERto do with an old Steam Link.

17:04SPEAKERLike there's not a big home brew scene for it.

17:07SPEAKERLike, is it still usable for its original purpose or?

17:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

17:13SPEAKER- Are you gonna benefit from,

17:13SPEAKERI guess maybe that's the real question,

17:15SPEAKERlike are they able to update the client's software on it

17:17SPEAKERand will that allow you to benefit

17:19SPEAKERfrom like improvements to latency and stuff

17:21SPEAKERor is the hardware itself old enough

17:23SPEAKERthat it's kind of hamstrung in that way?

17:25SPEAKER- So they're continuing to update it.

17:27SPEAKERI get updates every once in a while for it.

17:29SPEAKERIt is limited by the hardware

17:31SPEAKERin that it does not have hardware support for H.265,

17:35SPEAKERor if it does have hardware support for H.265,

17:38SPEAKERit doesn't, there's no Linux drivers

17:39SPEAKERfor whatever the hardware is that do that.

17:44SPEAKERBut at 1080p60, which is I think where it caps,

17:48SPEAKERexcuse me, where it caps out,

17:50SPEAKERit's really good at 1080p stuff.

17:53SPEAKERLike I play, I have them hooked up

17:55SPEAKERin my living room and bedroom.

17:56SPEAKERI put Moonlight on it so I can do the G4 streaming

18:01SPEAKERand get access to some other games

18:02SPEAKERthat aren't necessarily on Steam a little bit easier.

18:06SPEAKERI think it's fine.

18:07SPEAKERLike I wouldn't, that said,

18:08SPEAKERI definitely would not go like third party

18:11SPEAKER'cause Valve stopped selling them.

18:13SPEAKER- Right.

18:14SPEAKER- Like they've stopped selling them in favor

18:15SPEAKERof having apps that are built into the TVs

18:16SPEAKERor available on like Apple TV and stuff like that.

18:19SPEAKER- Yeah, like you can get, so it's the same name, right?

18:22SPEAKERIsn't the branding is still Steam Link even for the new app?

18:25SPEAKER- Yeah, the app is-

18:26SPEAKER- You can even get it for Raspberry Pi.

18:27SPEAKERLike they publish it for all kinds of stuff.

18:30SPEAKER- Yeah, so I was gonna say the solution,

18:31SPEAKERif you want a box and not an app

18:33SPEAKERthat's built into your set top box or your TV,

18:36SPEAKERif you don't wanna do that,

18:38SPEAKERthen the solution isn't to go to eBay and buy a Steam Link.

18:41SPEAKERIt's to go buy a Raspberry Pi three or four and use that.

18:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I Googled earlier just out of curiosity

18:47SPEAKERand I think they go for more now than they did at launch

18:49SPEAKERjust 'cause they're scarce enough

18:50SPEAKERand there's zero reason to spend that money.

18:53SPEAKER- No, I mean, the box is, it's a nice little box.

18:55SPEAKERIt doesn't have any active cooling, so it's quiet.

18:58SPEAKERBut no, just get a Raspberry Pi and buy a nice case

19:01SPEAKERand use that instead.

19:03SPEAKERAnd you'll have more,

19:04SPEAKERlike the hardware in these newer Raspberry Pis

19:06SPEAKERis more capable anyway.

19:08SPEAKER- Yes, by far.

19:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so like when these things started,

19:12SPEAKERwhen like the, remember the PlayStation TV,

19:15SPEAKER'cause you could stream from a PS4 to that too.

19:17SPEAKER- Could you?

19:18SPEAKER- Oh yeah. - PlayStation TV,

19:19SPEAKERGod, why am I blanking on what a PlayStation TV was that?

19:22SPEAKER- PlayStation TV is the Vita without--

19:24SPEAKER- Yeah, that was also the thing

19:25SPEAKERthat played Vita games on the TV.

19:26SPEAKERYes, now I remember. - Well, they played Vita games

19:27SPEAKERthat didn't require the back touch,

19:29SPEAKERI think was the limiter.

19:30SPEAKER- Now I remember.

19:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so you can do PlayStation TV,

19:37SPEAKERanother bad set-top box that you shouldn't try

19:38SPEAKERto find and buy one at this point.

19:41SPEAKERBut the point was, back when this started,

19:43SPEAKERyou needed a wired ethernet to wherever you wanted to work.

19:47SPEAKERAnd with AC, kind of you don't anymore.

19:50SPEAKERLike AC is pretty good.

19:53SPEAKERSo I have one wired setup with a Steam Link box

19:55SPEAKERand an Apple TV in the living room,

19:58SPEAKERone wireless in the bedroom that's just the Steam Link.

20:02SPEAKERAnd they're both fine.

20:05SPEAKERThe wireless is definitely not as good.

20:07SPEAKERYou occasionally get a little bit of blocky artifacting

20:09SPEAKERif something bad happens to the wifi.

20:12SPEAKERBut for the most part, it works just fine.

20:14SPEAKER- I continue to be so jealous of people in houses

20:16SPEAKERwho don't have catastrophic wifi pollution.

20:20SPEAKER- It is nice.

20:23SPEAKERThe AC stuff handles the catastrophic wifi pollution better

20:26SPEAKERthan any of the previous versions of wifi.

20:28SPEAKER'Cause there are still a dozen,

20:30SPEAKERlike I see a dozen APs from my house

20:32SPEAKERwhen I fire up my scanner thing.

20:35SPEAKER- Only a dozen.

20:36SPEAKER- Only a dozen, yeah, I know, I know.

20:40SPEAKERBut yeah, but the solution if you like the Steam Link

20:45SPEAKERis probably, like Steam Link is great

20:47SPEAKERfor games that run on Steam.

20:48SPEAKERIt's hard to run, whether you're using the box or the app,

20:53SPEAKERit's hard to run things from the Epic Store.

20:55SPEAKERIt's hard to run things that you buy

20:56SPEAKERfrom the Microsoft Store that come with Game Pass.

20:59SPEAKERIt's hard to run stuff from Origin.

21:01SPEAKER- Can you not, I could be totally off base here,

21:04SPEAKERbut I feel like I had seen,

21:06SPEAKER'cause you know, you can add custom games to Steam.

21:07SPEAKERYou can just say, hey, like point, you know,

21:10SPEAKERpoint yourself at this executable

21:11SPEAKERand now you're a Steam game, you know what I mean?

21:13SPEAKERLike I thought I had seen people say

21:14SPEAKERyou could just add games like that to Steam

21:16SPEAKERand then run them through Steam Link that way.

21:17SPEAKER- Sometimes you can.

21:18SPEAKER- Oh, not always, okay.

21:19SPEAKER- Not always.

21:20SPEAKERSo it depends on what kind of DRM they require.

21:24SPEAKERYou know how you can make like a file shortcut in Windows

21:27SPEAKERto launch a Steam game by like calling a specific URI,

21:31SPEAKERit's like Steam colon,

21:32SPEAKERand then there's a long series of digits numbers.

21:35SPEAKERThere isn't necessarily an Epic equivalent for that.

21:39SPEAKERAnd there definitely isn't a Microsoft equivalent for that.

21:42SPEAKERSo if like, if the Epic Store needs to be running

21:44SPEAKERin order to make the game work

21:46SPEAKERand you have to launch it through the Epic Store for the DRM,

21:49SPEAKERthat won't work.

21:51SPEAKERBut there is this thing called Glow SC

21:53SPEAKERthat's like a little bit of a wrapper.

21:56SPEAKERYou can download it, it's a tiny tool.

21:58SPEAKERBasically you point it at the thing that you want to run

22:00SPEAKERand you tell Steam and it builds a container for it

22:03SPEAKERthat Steam will recognize and that makes it work.

22:07SPEAKERAnd that even works for Microsoft store games,

22:10SPEAKERso Game Pass stuff works there too.

22:11SPEAKER- And that spelling on that is G-L-O-S-C.

22:14SPEAKER- Uh-huh, G-L-O-S-C.

22:16SPEAKER- To be clear.

22:17SPEAKER- Unfortunately, I've been using Glow SC

22:20SPEAKERfor two years now probably.

22:22SPEAKERThere are a handful of settings in there

22:24SPEAKERand my process, like there's no rhyme or reason

22:27SPEAKERto which games need which settings to work.

22:29SPEAKERSo you often find yourself in a,

22:32SPEAKERokay, I'm gonna make a shortcut, I'm gonna add it to Steam.

22:34SPEAKERDoes this one work?

22:35SPEAKERNo, okay.

22:36SPEAKERKill that shortcut, let's change this setting

22:38SPEAKERand see if changing the setting makes it work.

22:40SPEAKERDoes that work?

22:41SPEAKERYeah, okay, one more try at time

22:43SPEAKERand then you get on like the third try.

22:45SPEAKER- So it's free software?

22:47SPEAKER- It is free software. - That's what you're saying.

22:49SPEAKER- It's doing something that the system is not designed to do.

22:52SPEAKER- Yes, sidebar, just because you mentioned it a minute ago.

22:58SPEAKERWhat did we move from URL to URI?

23:00SPEAKERWhat does the I stand for?

23:01SPEAKERAnd are they the same thing?

23:03SPEAKERI mean, I know what a URL,

23:04SPEAKERin fact, I know what they both are, but like...

23:07SPEAKER- URI is more general.

23:09SPEAKERURL is only for HTTPS.

23:12SPEAKERI think it's indicator, but I'm not sure.

23:15SPEAKERUniversal resource indicator maybe.

23:17SPEAKER- Okay, I try to,

23:19SPEAKERgoogling that is way harder than you think.

23:21SPEAKER- Universe resource identifier.

23:22SPEAKER- Uniform resource, okay, I was trying to have to get past

23:24SPEAKERall the University of Rhode Island stuff.

23:26SPEAKER- I see, me too.

23:27SPEAKER- Also, every time I see URI,

23:29SPEAKERI just think of some kind of urinary tract infection

23:31SPEAKERor something. - Yeah.

23:33SPEAKERAh, so URI is a collective,

23:36SPEAKERis the, URL is the subset of a URI.

23:40SPEAKER- Okay, oh, there's also such a thing as URN.

23:43SPEAKER- Yeah, it was URN1. - The uniform resource name.

23:45SPEAKER- I, who's on first?

23:49SPEAKER- Interesting.

23:50SPEAKER- The IS, ISBN is a form of URN?

23:53SPEAKEROr no, I'm sorry, ISBN numbers can be encapsulated in URN.

23:57SPEAKERNobody cares about this, except me.

23:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:00SPEAKER- Okay, a URL is a type of URI.

24:03SPEAKER- Brad, we have a patron level that we can get you to

24:06SPEAKERthat we'll do an episode just on URIs and URNs,

24:09SPEAKERif you back the pod.

24:11SPEAKER- What level do I need to back?

24:12SPEAKEROkay, we'll talk about it later.

24:13SPEAKER- We'll talk about it offline.

24:14SPEAKER- I would love to become a supporter of this podcast.

24:16SPEAKER- It's a great podcast, everybody should.

24:17SPEAKER- So right here.

24:19SPEAKER- Okay, so Steam Link,

24:21SPEAKERpretty good if you buy all your stuff on Steam.

24:23SPEAKERIf you wanna play other stuff,

24:24SPEAKERmaybe look at some other options.

24:26SPEAKER- So that was my question. - It's the GLDR.

24:27SPEAKER- So is Moonlight the way to go?

24:30SPEAKERIs that where we should start?

24:31SPEAKER- So Moonlight is just a client

24:34SPEAKERfor the GeForce Game Stream.

24:36SPEAKER- Okay. - Protocol.

24:37SPEAKER- Okay, so. - Which is a private

24:39SPEAKERNVIDIA thing, it only works if you have an NVIDIA card.

24:40SPEAKER- I was gonna say that immediately disqualifies AMD owners.

24:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the bad news.

24:46SPEAKERThe good news is I think it's the best experience

24:49SPEAKERthat I've had for in-home.

24:50SPEAKER- I mean, the big question is,

24:52SPEAKERis it fully inclusive of Steam?

24:53SPEAKERLike it'll run anything on Steam?

24:55SPEAKER- You can open up Steam big picture from inside it.

24:57SPEAKERIt loads that up as a default option.

24:59SPEAKER- Okay, so and it works with just about anything else?

25:02SPEAKER- You can also load up the desktop

25:04SPEAKERso that anything you can launch from the desktop,

25:06SPEAKERyou can use.

25:08SPEAKERIt doesn't use the Steam Controller interface, usually.

25:12SPEAKERLike it shows up to Steam as an Xbox.

25:14SPEAKERThe controller you have plugged into the Steam Link

25:16SPEAKERor your Raspberry Pi or whatever,

25:18SPEAKERyour PC shows up as an Xbox 360 controller,

25:21SPEAKERI think, no matter what.

25:22SPEAKER- Okay.

25:25SPEAKER- It works really well.

25:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so like, what, 45 minutes ago

25:30SPEAKERwas the first time I ever tried it.

25:31SPEAKERYou had me connect to your machine.

25:33SPEAKERWe played some Samurai Gun.

25:36SPEAKERI played a little bit.

25:37SPEAKER- You kicked my ass at Samurai Gun?

25:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I was the connecting player.

25:41SPEAKER- Yes.

25:41SPEAKER- I wasn't gonna brag or anything.

25:43SPEAKER- No, it's fine.

25:45SPEAKER- So we played some of that.

25:46SPEAKERI ran around in Dead Cells a little bit.

25:49SPEAKERAnd so I, not to get ahead of ourselves,

25:51SPEAKERI came in here all excited to talk about how good Parsec is.

25:55SPEAKER- Parsec's really good.

25:56SPEAKER- And then I tried Moonlight and it is at least as good.

25:59SPEAKERLike I was kind of shocked.

26:00SPEAKERI was like, oh wow, maybe just streaming games remotely

26:03SPEAKERis fucking shockingly good now.

26:06SPEAKER- I mean, I think that's like my experience with this stuff

26:11SPEAKERover the last couple of months.

26:12SPEAKERWe haven't talked about Steam Remote Play together,

26:13SPEAKERwhich is kind of streaming, but not, I mean, it is streaming,

26:18SPEAKERbut it's a different use case.

26:19SPEAKERIt's like streaming multiplayer games

26:21SPEAKERthat are designed to be played on a couch together.

26:23SPEAKER- Well, so that's what Parsec is.

26:24SPEAKERSo those are actually directly analogous.

26:26SPEAKERBut I guess we'll get to that.

26:28SPEAKER- So let's talk about them in a minute then.

26:29SPEAKEROkay, so Game Stream is a thing that lives

26:32SPEAKERon top of the GeForce Experience.

26:37SPEAKERIf you open up the GeForce Experience

26:40SPEAKERand you go over to that tab, go into the settings

26:42SPEAKERand you go to, I think it's the shield tab.

26:46SPEAKERYou can flip a switch that says,

26:47SPEAKERhey, I want to stream games.

26:50SPEAKERIt knows what works really well by default.

26:53SPEAKERThat's part of the Nvidia's marketing,

26:55SPEAKERco-marketing program.

26:58SPEAKERYou can add anything you want,

26:59SPEAKERincluding the Windows desktop.

27:01SPEAKERIt automatically has a Steam big picture mode shortcut.

27:04SPEAKERSo like I was able to load up Tony Hawk one plus two

27:07SPEAKERand after a little bit of fiddling

27:08SPEAKERto get the controller working,

27:10SPEAKERit just, I can just play it on any TV in my house now,

27:13SPEAKERwhich is awesome.

27:15SPEAKERSamurai gun just worked.

27:16SPEAKERIf you have mouse and keyboards hooked up to the end points,

27:18SPEAKERyou can play stuff that uses a mouse and keyboard.

27:20SPEAKERI played some Surgeon Simulator the other day.

27:23SPEAKERAnd it, like I said, it does work with like games,

27:27SPEAKERlike Windows store, Microsoft store games

27:29SPEAKERthat you can't find the executable anywhere

27:32SPEAKERbecause it's buried in the program.

27:35SPEAKER- Did that on purpose.

27:36SPEAKER- Anywhere.

27:37SPEAKERI'm not going to take the bait.

27:39SPEAKER- You already took the bait.

27:40SPEAKER- I hope we're sending it.

27:42SPEAKER- This is the bait taken.

27:44SPEAKERBut like those games,

27:46SPEAKERlike when you download Gears of War 5

27:48SPEAKERfrom the Microsoft store,

27:49SPEAKERbecause you have game pass that it's just hidden something.

27:52SPEAKERIt's in some folder that you as the user on your computer

27:54SPEAKERdo not have access to.

27:55SPEAKER- Are not allowed to access on your own goddamn computer.

27:58SPEAKER- Continues to offend the living shit out of me.

28:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I just gave up on it.

28:02SPEAKERI was like, you know what, fine, fuck it.

28:03SPEAKERYou can have your protected system folder.

28:05SPEAKERI don't care what's in there.

28:06SPEAKERJust let me play the game.

28:08SPEAKERBut yeah, UWP is weird.

28:10SPEAKERIt's a weird little app basket.

28:13SPEAKERIt's a little bundle of things that you can't touch.

28:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's an app basket.

28:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

28:17SPEAKER- So what are the neat things about,

28:20SPEAKERokay, so a couple of things.

28:22SPEAKEROn all of these, you want to turn on NVFBC

28:24SPEAKERif you have an Nvidia card.

28:27SPEAKER- Wait, oh, you have to enable that manually?

28:29SPEAKER- On Steam, you do.

28:30SPEAKEROn Moonlight and Game Stream, you do not.

28:32SPEAKER- Sorry, what was the acronym?

28:34SPEAKER- NVFBC.

28:35SPEAKER- That's the Front Buffer Capture.

28:37SPEAKER- Front Frame Buffer Capture.

28:39SPEAKER- I'm sorry, you wrote Front Buffer Capture.

28:41SPEAKER- It's both.

28:42SPEAKERIt's either one.

28:43SPEAKER- It is, okay.

28:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

28:44SPEAKER- So that's a setting in Steam.

28:46SPEAKERYou have to, why would they not just,

28:47SPEAKERthat seems like something they would just turn on

28:48SPEAKERat runtime.

28:50SPEAKER- I don't know if they can detect

28:51SPEAKERwhether it's available on the cards

28:53SPEAKERwithout comparing to a list of the hardware.

28:55SPEAKER- Oh, that's another question.

28:56SPEAKERIs this only on recent G-forces

28:58SPEAKERor is this on any that are still in use?

29:01SPEAKERDo you know?

29:02SPEAKER- It works on both of my machines.

29:03SPEAKEROne has a 1080 and one has a 2080.

29:06SPEAKER- Okay.

29:07SPEAKER- I didn't know about prior to that,

29:08SPEAKERbut it works on those two for sure.

29:09SPEAKER- Okay.

29:11SPEAKER- And they didn't, I looked for documentation about this,

29:13SPEAKERbut it's not like a spec sheet thing

29:15SPEAKERthat normal people care about.

29:16SPEAKERSo I would be interested to hear

29:19SPEAKERif people have older cards where the cutoff is.

29:24SPEAKERThe Moonlight is an open source project

29:28SPEAKERthat uses the same protocol as the NVIDIA Shield,

29:30SPEAKERwhich is a series of hardware devices.

29:32SPEAKERThey have tablets that I don't think

29:33SPEAKERthey actually make the tablets anymore,

29:34SPEAKERbut they have set top boxes that are really super capable.

29:38SPEAKERLike it's like a super capable Apple TV, basically.

29:42SPEAKERThe Moonlight is if you want to put it on a Raspberry Pi,

29:47SPEAKERthere's a Steam Link version of the Moonlight client,

29:49SPEAKERwhich I've been using.

29:50SPEAKERYou can put it on your laptop,

29:51SPEAKERyou can run it on your phone, it's everywhere.

29:54SPEAKERSo the initial pairing stuff for all of this

29:57SPEAKERis more or less the same.

29:58SPEAKERBasically you say you want to connect to a server

30:00SPEAKERfrom the client.

30:01SPEAKERIt either gives you a number,

30:03SPEAKERit gives you a place to type in a number,

30:04SPEAKERand then you run it and look at what the number is.

30:07SPEAKERYou put the corresponding number in on one of the computers

30:10SPEAKERand you get it from the other one.

30:11SPEAKER- That is something to know ahead of time

30:13SPEAKERis that it does require a little bit of pre-planning

30:15SPEAKERor forethought.

30:16SPEAKERLike in a hypothetical world where like business travel

30:21SPEAKERhappened.

30:22SPEAKER- You want to pair before you leave the house.

30:23SPEAKER- Right, like if you happen to have your work laptop with you

30:26SPEAKERand you're halfway across the country,

30:27SPEAKERyou can't just install Moonlight and do it on a Lark.

30:29SPEAKERYou have to have paired that machine with your hosts

30:32SPEAKERbefore you left town.

30:34SPEAKER- And in the case of Moonlight,

30:35SPEAKERyou also have to open some ports if you want to do it

30:36SPEAKERacross the internet as a general rule.

30:38SPEAKER- Interesting.

30:40SPEAKER- They have a tool that kind of helps along

30:42SPEAKERwith that process.

30:43SPEAKERIt helps you know what UPnP port you need and all that stuff.

30:47SPEAKER- Maybe we'll get to that.

30:48SPEAKERThat might be an area where Parsec does have a leg up

30:50SPEAKERon Moonlight then.

30:51SPEAKER- I think that is definitely the case.

30:52SPEAKER- Because we have not had to do that so far.

30:56SPEAKER- So let's see you pair it.

30:59SPEAKERAnd the neat thing about Moonlight is all of the settings

31:00SPEAKERare on the client side.

31:01SPEAKERSo like on Steam, in order to change bit rate

31:04SPEAKERand stuff like that to do what your wifi can handle

31:07SPEAKERor what your network's capable of.

31:09SPEAKERWith Parsec, I can, I mean, with Moonlight,

31:11SPEAKERI can lay in bed and change the settings and see if it works

31:14SPEAKERand then change the settings down a little bit more

31:15SPEAKERand then see if it works and change the settings down

31:17SPEAKERa little bit more and see if it works.

31:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I was able to adjust the bit rate.

31:19SPEAKERI was quote unquote connected to your instance

31:21SPEAKERthe whole time, but I just in between games, you know,

31:24SPEAKERI quit out of dead cells and then I went

31:25SPEAKERand boosted the bit rate by a factor of like three,

31:29SPEAKERlike triple, I went and tripled the bit rate

31:30SPEAKERand then immediately launched another game

31:31SPEAKERand it just worked seamlessly.

31:33SPEAKERIt was nice.

31:34SPEAKER- So in my experience, a bit rate in the house

31:37SPEAKERof like 30 megabits is like, I can't tell much

31:40SPEAKERof a difference above that at 1080p.

31:42SPEAKER- That's probably fine.

31:43SPEAKERI just went to 150 because that was the highest

31:45SPEAKERit supported and I wanted to see if--

31:46SPEAKER- Oh God, it went to 150.

31:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I boosted it all the way up there.

31:48SPEAKERI mean, granted we both have gigabit up and down

31:51SPEAKERand you live like 10 miles away.

31:53SPEAKERSo like that's, these are pretty ideal network conditions.

31:56SPEAKER- Yeah, the only way we could do better than that

31:58SPEAKERbetween houses is if we ran an ethernet cable

32:00SPEAKERand you live next door.

32:01SPEAKER- Yes, but yeah, like I said, even at a fifth of that,

32:08SPEAKERa bit rate of a fifth of that or so,

32:10SPEAKERit's extremely high quality.

32:15SPEAKER- There's a lot of settings as always,

32:17SPEAKERbut for the most part, you can set it up.

32:19SPEAKERLike I said, it passes an Xbox controller,

32:22SPEAKERpasses whatever you have as an Xbox controller

32:24SPEAKERto the client, to the host machine,

32:26SPEAKERand then you configure it to work.

32:27SPEAKERAnd the challenge on Moonlight comes often

32:32SPEAKERwith the interaction between the game,

32:34SPEAKERthe Nvidia game stream, game pad capture

32:38SPEAKERand Steam hardware, like the Steam controller support.

32:42SPEAKER- I forget why I did, oh, I know why I did it.

32:44SPEAKERI was taking screenshots in a game.

32:46SPEAKERSo I set up, and this is a feature

32:48SPEAKERthat I'm not super familiar with,

32:49SPEAKERbut I set up a custom profile

32:51SPEAKERfor my Xbox controller and Steam.

32:53SPEAKERI don't know how long that's been in there.

32:55SPEAKER- Five years came out with the Vive.

32:58SPEAKER- Really?

32:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:00SPEAKERThey didn't expose it for normal controllers

33:01SPEAKERfor a couple of years after that,

33:02SPEAKERbut you can get to it.

33:03SPEAKER- Okay, that would explain it.

33:04SPEAKERYeah, it's the thing that lets you kind of remap

33:06SPEAKERthe buttons of the controller at the Steam level,

33:09SPEAKERlets you bind, in fact, full-on keyboard shortcuts

33:12SPEAKERto different buttons, stuff like that.

33:13SPEAKERAnyway.

33:14SPEAKER- Well, and it lets you use a PS4 controller with Steam

33:17SPEAKERthat then shows up to the game as an Xbox 360 controller

33:20SPEAKERwithout using DS for Windows or something like that.

33:22SPEAKER- A lot of cool stuff like that.

33:23SPEAKERBut I had set a controller up to take screenshots

33:26SPEAKERwith a certain button,

33:27SPEAKERso that's why I have that old custom profile loaded.

33:29SPEAKERAnd the point is that that seemed to confuse Moonlight

33:33SPEAKERenough that it couldn't see my controller,

33:34SPEAKERbecause that's the Tesla running theory

33:37SPEAKERof why it couldn't find my controller.

33:39SPEAKER- I think they fight over it,

33:40SPEAKERand you end up in a weird situation where,

33:46SPEAKERfor Marvel Avengers, for example, the other night,

33:48SPEAKERI had to turn off Steam controller support for that game

33:52SPEAKERin order to see the Moonlight controller

33:55SPEAKERwhen I was playing the game.

33:57SPEAKERThe other thing is both Steam Link and Moonlight

33:59SPEAKERwill let you use the right stick on the controller

34:04SPEAKERand the right trigger as a mouse analog.

34:09SPEAKERIt is absolutely maddening.

34:11SPEAKERIt is one of the worst UI experiences

34:13SPEAKERI've ever had on all fronts.

34:16SPEAKERSo if you are going to do this

34:18SPEAKERand it is too far to walk back and forth

34:20SPEAKERbetween the two computers,

34:21SPEAKERmaybe consider getting a wireless mouse and keyboard,

34:24SPEAKERlike one of those, Microsoft and Logitech

34:27SPEAKERboth make wireless keyboard/trackpad things

34:30SPEAKERthat are like 25 bucks.

34:31SPEAKER- Oh, you're talking just to do the minimum required input

34:34SPEAKERto make things go, not to actually play a game on?

34:36SPEAKERYeah, I've got one of those.

34:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's purely for interacting with the computer

34:41SPEAKERin the living room, not playing games.

34:43SPEAKER- I think the K400 is the Logitech I've got,

34:46SPEAKERbut maybe there's probably a newer model at this point.

34:49SPEAKERMine is very old.

34:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's a useful thing to have anyway

34:53SPEAKERfor misters and other things.

34:55SPEAKERAnd yeah, like 25 bucks.

34:58SPEAKERSo that's Moonlight.

35:00SPEAKERBefore we jump to the parsec,

35:02SPEAKERwhich is I think a little bit of a different thing,

35:06SPEAKERif you want to know how to make this stuff better,

35:09SPEAKERrun a cable is the first thing.

35:11SPEAKERLike if you can run an ethernet cable,

35:13SPEAKERyou're going to have a better experience with the wifi,

35:15SPEAKERI think, no matter what.

35:17SPEAKERHarder acceleration on the host has to be on

35:20SPEAKERfor this to be playable in my experience.

35:23SPEAKERAnd ideally you do the GPU video acceleration,

35:26SPEAKERwhich basically gives you instant video encodes.

35:29SPEAKERBut if you don't have that,

35:30SPEAKERthen the CPU acceleration is pretty good on Intel.

35:33SPEAKERAt least I haven't tried the AMD stuff.

35:35SPEAKER- Do you have any, not to digress,

35:37SPEAKERbut I'm totally going to digress.

35:38SPEAKERDo you need any tips to people who can't like run cables

35:41SPEAKERthrough walls for running cables?

35:43SPEAKER- Powerline's pretty good.

35:45SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I meant physically running an ethernet

35:47SPEAKER'cause I accept nothing but the best.

35:50SPEAKER- Around the edges.

35:52SPEAKERSo if you can put holes in the floor or the baseboard,

35:56SPEAKERlittle tiny pinholes, you can get these cable,

35:59SPEAKERthey're like cable tacked downs.

36:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the little nail things.

36:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a little plastic loop

36:07SPEAKERthat just holds the cable against the floor.

36:09SPEAKERComcast used to always put them

36:10SPEAKERwhen they would run a cable along a wall in your house.

36:14SPEAKERThere you can get a box of a hundred of them

36:16SPEAKERat the hardware store for like five bucks.

36:17SPEAKER- Yeah, those are good.

36:19SPEAKER- That'll let you do what you want.

36:21SPEAKERYou can also get flat ethernet is the other option.

36:24SPEAKER- So yeah, I just ordered one of those

36:25SPEAKERfor a completely different purpose,

36:27SPEAKERbut I got a couple of flat ethernet cables

36:29SPEAKERon the way right now, actually.

36:31SPEAKER- I mean, an important part of how ethernet,

36:35SPEAKERthe way of the way cat five and cat six works

36:37SPEAKERhas to do with the twists of the sub pairs inside the wires.

36:42SPEAKERSo I don't, I assume they work.

36:44SPEAKERI haven't used one.

36:45SPEAKERI know that a lot of people who have,

36:47SPEAKERlike people use them to run like ethernet and HDMI

36:50SPEAKERup to their TV that's mounted on the wall

36:52SPEAKERso that it's flush and you can just kind of

36:53SPEAKERput a little bit of paint and some stuff over it

36:55SPEAKERso it looks like a weird bulge in the wall

36:57SPEAKERrather than a cable going up there.

36:59SPEAKER- You know what?

37:00SPEAKERThey said the same thing about rounded IDE cables

37:03SPEAKERback in the day.

37:04SPEAKERWell, actually technically they said the opposite.

37:06SPEAKER- Yeah, we always said don't use rounded IDE cables.

37:10SPEAKER- Well no, but I mean, that was going the opposite direction.

37:11SPEAKERThose started out flat and became round.

37:13SPEAKERAnd now what we're talking about is going

37:15SPEAKERfrom round to flat.

37:16SPEAKER- Oh, that's true.

37:17SPEAKER- That's the opposite direction.

37:18SPEAKER- Did you ever try to make a flat IDE cable round?

37:20SPEAKER- Fuck no.

37:21SPEAKERI saw people, people literally took the razor blade

37:23SPEAKERand like cut the insulation between.

37:27SPEAKERFuck that.

37:27SPEAKER- We did that at Maximum PC once,

37:29SPEAKERjust to see if we could do it.

37:32SPEAKERFive people made them and one of them worked.

37:34SPEAKER- Wow, that's not a great success rate, I'm gonna say.

37:37SPEAKER- I mean, they were free.

37:37SPEAKERThey come with the motherboard.

37:38SPEAKER- But I did buy a good number of rounded IDE cables.

37:43SPEAKER- They were bad.

37:44SPEAKER- They all worked fine.

37:45SPEAKERI never had a problem.

37:46SPEAKER- Well, no, the problem with them was that they,

37:48SPEAKERso if you were gonna buy rounded IDE cables,

37:50SPEAKERmy stance was always that you should just get the ones

37:52SPEAKERthat were only two ends.

37:54SPEAKER'Cause the ones, 'cause like an IDE cable,

37:55SPEAKERyou could have three plugs on,

37:57SPEAKERbut that middle plug was useless.

37:58SPEAKER'Cause all it did was jack up the whole cable,

38:00SPEAKERmake it really wide and unwieldy.

38:02SPEAKERAnd probably you weren't gonna be able to get it

38:04SPEAKERwhere you wanted it to be anyway.

38:05SPEAKERSo you might as well just take that one out

38:07SPEAKERand buy a two end one,

38:08SPEAKERand then you have a nice clean round cable.

38:10SPEAKER- That's fair.

38:11SPEAKERYeah.

38:13SPEAKERSo yeah, turn on the NVFBC if you're using Steam,

38:17SPEAKER'cause that stuff is dope.

38:18SPEAKERIt's really good.

38:20SPEAKERAnd if everything you have on the video card

38:25SPEAKERand on the client supports 265, H.265,

38:29SPEAKERyou should do that 'cause you're gonna have

38:32SPEAKERbetter image quality with a different kind of artifact

38:36SPEAKERthan you will with H.264 that you don't notice as much.

38:38SPEAKER- Sure.

38:40SPEAKER- I think that's it.

38:41SPEAKERThe Glow SC thing is important for playing non-Steam games

38:44SPEAKERon Steam.

38:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:46SPEAKER- And, oh, oh, the other thing is

38:48SPEAKERon the game stream stuff with Nvidia,

38:50SPEAKERyou can add unsupported games.

38:52SPEAKERSo if you go to that games tab,

38:54SPEAKERthe shield tab in the settings page,

38:57SPEAKERyou can go down to the bottom and hit the add button

38:59SPEAKERand add anything you want.

39:01SPEAKERAnd that is very convenient as well.

39:04SPEAKER- Good to know.

39:05SPEAKER- Or like I said, just have the desktop

39:06SPEAKERand click on whatever, you know,

39:08SPEAKERtype it in with your $25 keyboard and mouse.

39:11SPEAKER- Braver than I am.

39:12SPEAKER- What's up with Parsec, man?

39:14SPEAKERI'm curious about this.

39:14SPEAKERI haven't used it at all.

39:15SPEAKER- So like I said, I came in here

39:17SPEAKERready to just extol the virtues of this low latency,

39:20SPEAKERhigh video quality back in tech.

39:22SPEAKERBut then again, like I just said,

39:24SPEAKERwhen we tried Moonlight earlier,

39:25SPEAKERit seems pretty much just as good.

39:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:28SPEAKER- So it seems more of the case that just this technology

39:30SPEAKERhas evolved to the point that it's quite good now.

39:33SPEAKERI guess the biggest difference with Parsec

39:35SPEAKERis it's much more focused on enabling multiplayer.

39:39SPEAKERIt's kind of what Steam Game Stream does.

39:41SPEAKERLike Moon, well, let me back up.

39:43SPEAKERLike philosophically Moonlight is,

39:46SPEAKERcorrect me if I'm wrong,

39:47SPEAKERit's more geared toward you playing your own games

39:49SPEAKERoff of your hardware or somewhere else, right?

39:51SPEAKER- I think that is correct, yes.

39:53SPEAKER- That's the biggest use case of Moonlight.

39:55SPEAKER- Whether, and somewhere else in that case

39:57SPEAKERcan be in your house.

39:58SPEAKER- Somewhere else in your house or on the road.

40:00SPEAKER- Out in the world.

40:00SPEAKER- Yes. - Yes.

40:02SPEAKER- Parsec's intended use case is more for multiplayer.

40:06SPEAKERIt's more for allowing co-op of local games remotely,

40:11SPEAKERthat kind of thing.

40:12SPEAKER- So like if you want to play Getting Over It,

40:16SPEAKERoh, not Getting Over It, the men's stacking game.

40:20SPEAKER- Mount Your Friends.

40:21SPEAKER- Mount Your Friends, if you want to play Mount Your Friends.

40:23SPEAKER- If you want to remotely mount your friends,

40:25SPEAKERyou can do that.

40:27SPEAKER- I think that's a different episode, actually.

40:29SPEAKER- For sure.

40:30SPEAKERLike, I mean, the best real world example

40:31SPEAKERis apparently the fighting game community

40:33SPEAKERis using Parsec quite a bit for remote tournaments right now.

40:36SPEAKER- Really?

40:37SPEAKER- Since they can't get together, yeah.

40:38SPEAKERIn fact, that is probably the biggest endorsement

40:40SPEAKERyou could have.

40:41SPEAKER- Holy shit, I didn't know that.

40:43SPEAKER- If the FGC has deemed it latency appropriate

40:46SPEAKERfor, you know, these are not necessarily talking about Evo.

40:49SPEAKERI'm not sure what the stakes are,

40:51SPEAKERbut if they're willing to use this

40:54SPEAKERin competitive situations,

40:55SPEAKERyou can assume it's pretty good.

40:57SPEAKER- So it's like one person hosting

40:59SPEAKERand then both the players are connecting

41:00SPEAKERso that nobody has host advantage?

41:02SPEAKER- That's a good question.

41:04SPEAKERThat's a good question.

41:05SPEAKERI mean, in that case, wouldn't you want

41:06SPEAKERa third party to host?

41:08SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying.

41:08SPEAKERHow about a third party host and yeah.

41:10SPEAKER- Yes.

41:11SPEAKER- Is this for old games, like emulated Street Fighter II

41:14SPEAKERand stuff like that?

41:15SPEAKER- I don't know, I haven't looked too deeply into it.

41:16SPEAKERI've just seen some people saying that the FGC types

41:19SPEAKERare using this for remote tournaments recently.

41:21SPEAKER- That's awesome, I didn't know that.

41:24SPEAKER- So it's client software that you download

41:26SPEAKERor client and host software.

41:28SPEAKERWell, I guess one of the bigger disadvantages

41:30SPEAKERover something like Moonlight

41:31SPEAKERis you have to make an account with them.

41:34SPEAKERIt's a very Discord-like signup process.

41:36SPEAKERYou get a username with a kind of a hash,

41:38SPEAKERlike a number appended to it.

41:40SPEAKERSo then you have a friends list,

41:41SPEAKERyou have to add people to your friends list.

41:42SPEAKERYou are going through their central authentication

41:45SPEAKERto use it, like you can't.

41:49SPEAKER- Whereas Moonlight is completely decentralized

41:51SPEAKERand self-hosted.

41:51SPEAKER- Moonlight is a full on open source.

41:54SPEAKERMoonlight has a GitHub repo, like it does that.

41:56SPEAKER- I mean, you do still need

41:57SPEAKERthe NVIDIA GeForce Experience stuff to use Moonlight.

41:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

42:00SPEAKERBut what I mean is it's free and open

42:04SPEAKERin the way that open source software tends to be,

42:06SPEAKERwhereas Parsec, which is a commercial product

42:08SPEAKERand you full on have a paid corporate option for Parsec

42:12SPEAKERis much more, it's account driven is what I'm saying.

42:15SPEAKER- It's a business.

42:16SPEAKER- You have to give them your email address

42:18SPEAKERor an email address to use it, is what I'm getting at.

42:23SPEAKERYeah, you know, yes, I did.

42:24SPEAKERAnything that makes me want to there,

42:25SPEAKERmakes me sign up, gives me some pause,

42:27SPEAKERbut it's worked really well for us so far.

42:29SPEAKER- I assume that having an account

42:32SPEAKERand having to go through their central backend,

42:34SPEAKERwhatever it is, is probably why we haven't had to worry

42:37SPEAKERabout any port forwarding with this.

42:38SPEAKER- That's, my guess is that that is what you're paying for

42:42SPEAKERis not having to fool with ports.

42:43SPEAKER- To be clear, the paid account is like a corporate thing.

42:46SPEAKERI'm not sure what the benefits are,

42:47SPEAKERbut like as a, just an end user, you can use it for free.

42:50SPEAKER- Oh, so there's probably what you're getting

42:52SPEAKERwith the corporate account is like uptime

42:53SPEAKERand stuff like that, right?

42:54SPEAKER- I could look it up real fast.

42:57SPEAKER- No dude, what they're doing is they're using that

42:59SPEAKERto do game events and now they can't take over

43:01SPEAKERthe cliff ballroom and bring people in.

43:03SPEAKER- I think you're right.

43:04SPEAKERThat is totally probably how they're monetizing

43:05SPEAKERis like they're-

43:07SPEAKER- Well, I saw a press release that I think

43:10SPEAKERthat Ubi event a couple of, when they did-

43:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I would believe that.

43:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:15SPEAKER- In fact, I know that actually,

43:15SPEAKERI know some companies have been doing remote press events,

43:18SPEAKERremote preview stuff with Parsec specifically.

43:20SPEAKERI just looked it up.

43:22SPEAKERYou can pay them 10 bucks a month as a end user

43:25SPEAKERto get stuff like, you know, like a better color space.

43:28SPEAKERYou get 444, if you're familiar with what that means

43:31SPEAKERinstead of 422.

43:32SPEAKER- Is it better than 422?

43:33SPEAKERYeah, okay.

43:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:35SPEAKER- There's two more in each of the last two columns.

43:37SPEAKER- It says better color, pen and tablet support,

43:41SPEAKERdual streaming, screen switching,

43:43SPEAKERsome features like that if you want to pay,

43:45SPEAKERbut that's not really what we're here to talk about,

43:48SPEAKERbut they really talk a big game about their tech.

43:52SPEAKERThey have, I linked it in the show notes here.

43:54SPEAKERThey have a page on their streaming tech.

43:56SPEAKERWe don't take shortcuts.

43:59SPEAKER- So they have a Millennium Falcon.

44:01SPEAKERIt's gotta be fast.

44:01SPEAKER- They say their core technology suite

44:03SPEAKERis built in cross-platform C.

44:07SPEAKERThey devise their own peer-to-peer networking protocol

44:10SPEAKERcalled BUD or better user datagrams.

44:12SPEAKERI just, I appreciate that they put this information

44:14SPEAKERout there.

44:15SPEAKER- Wait, hold on.

44:16SPEAKER- I'm not here trying to sing their praises

44:18SPEAKERso much as I just like when a company shows you

44:20SPEAKERwhat's behind the curtain.

44:21SPEAKER- I'm disappointed.

44:22SPEAKERI thought this product was named after the TI 99-4A

44:25SPEAKERclassic parsec, not, we can make the Kessel run

44:28SPEAKERin less than 12 parsecs.

44:30SPEAKER- Let's just, let's not.

44:31SPEAKER- I'm just sad.

44:32SPEAKER- Try to keep nerd references to a minimum on this podcast,

44:35SPEAKERif possible.

44:36SPEAKERWe make our own nerd references around here, thank you.

44:38SPEAKER- TI 99-4A parsec is a fantastic game, Brad.

44:41SPEAKER- That's a, you know, that's a good reference.

44:42SPEAKERI'll give you that.

44:43SPEAKERYou know what, a good reference is when you have like a,

44:46SPEAKERlike a maybe 50% success rate of somebody getting it or not.

44:49SPEAKER- The Dennis Miller ratio.

44:50SPEAKER- You need to make it mysterious enough

44:52SPEAKERthat some people haven't heard of it and they're like,

44:53SPEAKERoh man, he's in the know, what is that?

44:55SPEAKERI gotta go look that up.

44:56SPEAKERI am not cool for not knowing what that game is.

45:00SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, I pulled this up 'cause they quote in here

45:03SPEAKERthat they have a, what they call a 97%

45:06SPEAKERNAT traversal success rate.

45:08SPEAKER- That's really good.

45:09SPEAKER- So that must be, I assume that's why you're not having

45:11SPEAKERto fiddle with port forwarding and stuff like that

45:13SPEAKERto get this to work.

45:14SPEAKERIt's just, it's breaching people's NATs

45:19SPEAKERwithout assistance.

45:19SPEAKER- Well, my router is the NAT buster right now

45:22SPEAKERbecause it doesn't support UPnP

45:25SPEAKERand it doesn't support loopback.

45:26SPEAKERSo like there's a ton of stuff that just doesn't work right.

45:29SPEAKERBecause AT&T blows.

45:32SPEAKER- Sounds like maybe you need to bring a fancy router

45:33SPEAKERinto your life.

45:36SPEAKERI remember a time, I'm not gonna name any names.

45:41SPEAKERI remember someone denigrating the fancy router.

45:47SPEAKER- I just didn't want, it was a Patreon post.

45:50SPEAKERI just didn't want to have,

45:51SPEAKERI don't need more complexity in my life.

45:53SPEAKERI need less complexity in my life.

45:54SPEAKER- The shitty routers come for us all eventually.

45:58SPEAKER- Fucking shitty routers, anyway.

45:59SPEAKER- Try to do enough cool stuff with your internet connection.

46:01SPEAKERSooner or later, your shitty router is gonna get in the way.

46:04SPEAKERAnd then it's time for the fancy router.

46:06SPEAKER- I mean, fair, fair, so.

46:09SPEAKER- Anyway.

46:11SPEAKER- So next month, me building my PF sense machine.

46:15SPEAKER- I'm all for it.

46:16SPEAKERThey mentioned some latency tests they did on here.

46:18SPEAKERI mean, this is granted, this is on the LAN,

46:20SPEAKERbut they quoted a seven millisecond extra latency situation

46:24SPEAKERwith this over the LAN.

46:26SPEAKER- That's pretty amazing.

46:27SPEAKER- Basically nothing.

46:28SPEAKERGranted, I don't know what that would be over,

46:30SPEAKEReven between me and you,

46:31SPEAKERI'm sure it will be a little like a handful

46:33SPEAKERof more milliseconds.

46:35SPEAKER- I mean, we're on different ISPs,

46:36SPEAKERso we have to go out to a backbone probably someplace.

46:38SPEAKERI wish we could have seen what the latency,

46:41SPEAKERwhat the end-to-end latency was

46:42SPEAKERwhen you were on the Moonlight connection here.

46:44SPEAKER- Yeah, we would have had to set some kind of test up,

46:46SPEAKERbut whatever, I've used this in the world.

46:48SPEAKERI've played games with Vinny in New Jersey from California.

46:52SPEAKERI've played games with other people in the Bay Area here.

46:55SPEAKERSo we've been using this for QuickLix.

46:57SPEAKERThat's the big one for us is not just a play multiplayer,

47:01SPEAKERbut you just need to let the other person

47:02SPEAKERsee what you're doing to talk about it, right?

47:04SPEAKERAnd this has been damn near real time

47:08SPEAKERas far as that stuff goes.

47:10SPEAKERI don't think people can tell the difference now.

47:12SPEAKER- I remember when we tried experimenting with that stuff

47:14SPEAKERin like 2010, when we were like, let's just do a,

47:17SPEAKERI feel like maybe Vinny and I did a,

47:20SPEAKERlet's see if we can do this remotely test

47:23SPEAKERand it didn't work.

47:24SPEAKERLike there was no,

47:25SPEAKERyou were five seconds behind or something.

47:27SPEAKERIt was ridiculous.

47:28SPEAKER- Yes, that stuff.

47:30SPEAKER- Pretty bad.

47:32SPEAKERYeah, like the Battletoads QuickLix we did,

47:34SPEAKERI did with Jason was posting that on his PC

47:36SPEAKERand I played it second player

47:38SPEAKERand like video quality and latency,

47:40SPEAKERI could barely tell the difference from a local game.

47:43SPEAKER- What's the client situation?

47:46SPEAKERIs it available for everything?

47:47SPEAKER- So that's kind of a bummer.

47:50SPEAKERThe client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux,

47:52SPEAKERbut you can only host from a Windows machine

47:53SPEAKERas of right now.

47:55SPEAKER- I mean, that makes sense,

47:56SPEAKERgiven what you're gonna be playing.

47:57SPEAKER- For the most part, yeah.

47:59SPEAKERI did want to host from MacBook at one point

48:02SPEAKERand was not able to, and that really sucked,

48:03SPEAKERbut we have weird use cases for this stuff.

48:06SPEAKER- So I have a weird question.

48:08SPEAKER- Yes.

48:11SPEAKER- Is there anybody that's built something

48:12SPEAKERthat would let me use one of these streaming technologies

48:16SPEAKERto play games on, for example,

48:19SPEAKERa FPGA based hardware emulation platform

48:22SPEAKERwith people that are not sitting in the house with me?

48:24SPEAKER- I don't think that exists as of yet,

48:26SPEAKERbut it's probably possible.

48:28SPEAKERThere may have in fact been people on our discord

48:31SPEAKERin the last couple of days

48:32SPEAKERspeculating about building exactly that.

48:35SPEAKER- I mean, all you would need to do

48:38SPEAKERis have a control, set up like a microcontroller

48:41SPEAKERas a controller emulator

48:44SPEAKERand pass the inputs, right?

48:47SPEAKERIt's pretty straightforward.

48:47SPEAKER- Do you even need that?

48:48SPEAKERCould you do that over a network?

48:50SPEAKERI mean, obviously you would have to build that in

48:52SPEAKERto the mystery.

48:53SPEAKER- I don't know.

48:54SPEAKERI kind of just went cross-eyed thinking about this

48:56SPEAKER'cause it's a little weird.

48:58SPEAKER- There were totally a couple of people

48:59SPEAKERin the mystery channel the other day

49:00SPEAKERtalking about how much access to the Linux subsystem

49:03SPEAKERon the mystery you get

49:04SPEAKERand whether they could maybe think about implementing

49:07SPEAKERsomething like that.

49:08SPEAKER- I will go dig into that.

49:09SPEAKER- Yes, but anyway.

49:13SPEAKERIt's an interesting thing.

49:15SPEAKERThis is one of those examples of a technology that came out

49:17SPEAKERand everybody tried it and was like,

49:18SPEAKERoh, this kind of sucks.

49:19SPEAKERAnd then over the last five years

49:20SPEAKERit's gotten quietly really good.

49:21SPEAKER- Yeah, like don't get me wrong.

49:23SPEAKERI still want a new G-Force.

49:25SPEAKERI still want to play games locally in my house

49:28SPEAKERwith hardware sitting by my feet.

49:30SPEAKER- Going all xCloud and Stadia next gen, Brad?

49:32SPEAKER- No, but when you need it.

49:34SPEAKER- Gaikai?

49:35SPEAKER- When you're in situations like we're in

49:36SPEAKERwhere we need to record videos of games

49:38SPEAKERand get people looking at games in high quality

49:41SPEAKERand close to real time,

49:43SPEAKERit's gotten shockingly effective for that.

49:45SPEAKER- Look, think about all the money your PC is wasting

49:49SPEAKERin electricity playing these games.

49:51SPEAKERYou could move your PC back into the CBS office

49:54SPEAKERwhere it has a fatty internet pipe,

49:57SPEAKERhook it up in there and let the man eat your power bill.

50:01SPEAKER- That's right, I don't have to.

50:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:04SPEAKER- I don't pay the power bill in the office.

50:06SPEAKER- No, that's free money right there.

50:08SPEAKER- That's a good point.

50:09SPEAKERI have to think about that.

50:09SPEAKER- Yeah, think about that.

50:10SPEAKER- Just a couple more things I was gonna say about Parsec,

50:13SPEAKERthe front end UI I've found has left a lot

50:15SPEAKERto be desired in a lot of ways.

50:17SPEAKER- How did it compare to the Moonlight front end UI?

50:20SPEAKER- That's another situation where Moonlight

50:22SPEAKERdefinitely looks and feels like open source software.

50:24SPEAKERLike it's fine, but it's a little klutzy, I would say.

50:29SPEAKER- I would, it does not have the attention to UI and UX

50:34SPEAKERthat a commercial product typically does.

50:36SPEAKER- To be fair, like the look and feel

50:38SPEAKERof the Parsec client is totally fine.

50:39SPEAKERWhat I'm talking about is like idiosyncrasies like,

50:42SPEAKERso the capture happens at either the app

50:44SPEAKERor the monitor level.

50:46SPEAKERSo you can either say only capture the apps I tell you to

50:49SPEAKERor capture everything on the screen.

50:52SPEAKERThe frustration with the app capture is

50:53SPEAKERif you tab out of the app, you tell it to capture,

50:55SPEAKERit will just go to a generic,

50:57SPEAKERlike the host is doing something else screen.

51:00SPEAKERSo that's very problematic.

51:02SPEAKERFor example, if I wanna like capture

51:04SPEAKERmy Elgato capture window and then tab into OBS

51:08SPEAKERto start a recording or whatever,

51:09SPEAKERthen my client viewers lose my feed, which sucks ass.

51:13SPEAKERSo you can say just like,

51:15SPEAKERhey, just stream this entire desktop.

51:16SPEAKERBut then of course you're sending your whole desktop

51:18SPEAKERand all the problems that that entails.

51:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:21SPEAKER- When it breaks out the monitors in the monitor list,

51:23SPEAKERat least in my case, they all have the exact same name.

51:26SPEAKERThey all just say generic PNP monitor.

51:28SPEAKERSo I can't tell which monitor I'm sending people.

51:31SPEAKER- And does it tell you which one's,

51:32SPEAKERlike does it pick the numbers?

51:34SPEAKER- Every time we do this,

51:35SPEAKERI have to ask whoever's joining me like,

51:37SPEAKERokay, which monitor are you seeing?

51:38SPEAKERAnd most of the time it's the wrong one.

51:40SPEAKERSo I have to switch it.

51:40SPEAKER- Video game or hardcore pornography?

51:42SPEAKER- Like it's that situation basically.

51:43SPEAKERIt's a bunch of little, a few little things like that

51:46SPEAKERthat are pretty frustrating about it.

51:48SPEAKEROh yeah, that's one other thing about Parsec.

51:50SPEAKERIt has a web client, which I assume you,

51:52SPEAKERI assume you still need a login.

51:54SPEAKER- I'm sure.

51:55SPEAKER- So I'm sure you still have to make an account to use it,

51:56SPEAKERbut it's web RTPC based.

51:59SPEAKERIt says it only works in Chrome.

52:01SPEAKERWhat?

52:01SPEAKER- What if the web client just worked like,

52:03SPEAKERremember that chat roulette thing

52:05SPEAKERwhere you would just log into a web page

52:06SPEAKERand get to some random person?

52:08SPEAKER- I miss chat roulette.

52:09SPEAKER- What if you could just Parsec

52:10SPEAKERinto a random person's computer

52:11SPEAKERand it's like, ah!

52:13SPEAKER- That's pretty, that would be pretty good, actually.

52:15SPEAKER- That would be a disaster, but it would be wonderful.

52:18SPEAKER- People opt into it, you know,

52:20SPEAKERso they know what they're getting into.

52:22SPEAKERChatroulette.com still exists apparently.

52:25SPEAKERI don't think I should click this button to start it though.

52:28SPEAKER- Chat roulette was amazing until the penis

52:30SPEAKERto normal funny things ratio was really high.

52:33SPEAKER- That's a shame.

52:35SPEAKER- I did get one, like people doing a skit,

52:37SPEAKERlike they were doing a performance of bad relationship

52:41SPEAKERfor me while I was watching them.

52:44SPEAKEROr maybe they just had a bad, anyway.

52:45SPEAKER- Chat roulette is a very Whiskey Media Basement thing

52:47SPEAKERfor me that was definitely that era, like I remember.

52:50SPEAKERI think there wasn't there, there was one night upstairs

52:52SPEAKERin the glass, the fishbowl conference room,

52:54SPEAKEReverybody was like getting drunk

52:55SPEAKERand screwing around on chat roulette.

52:57SPEAKER- We were just dragging people on chat roulette for hours.

52:59SPEAKERYeah.

53:00SPEAKER- My favorite one was,

53:01SPEAKERdid you ever see the piano improv guy?

53:03SPEAKER- That guy was great.

53:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:05SPEAKER- Ben Folds. - Hi, sure.

53:07SPEAKERThis guy was the better Ben Folds.

53:10SPEAKER- Yeah, Ben Folds used to do that too.

53:12SPEAKER- Did he really, like the real Ben did?

53:13SPEAKER- Really, that's my understanding, yeah.

53:15SPEAKERI met the chat roulette improv guy at XOXO one year.

53:18SPEAKER- Yeah, shit.

53:18SPEAKER- Yeah, they had him come out and talk.

53:21SPEAKER- Wow, that's cool.

53:22SPEAKER- Yeah, he was very cool.

53:23SPEAKER- That was a fun era of internet

53:25SPEAKERbefore everything went to shit.

53:27SPEAKER- Yeah, the internet used to be really good.

53:28SPEAKER- Anyway, there's a web client for Parsec

53:31SPEAKERif you just want to get people on

53:32SPEAKERand they're not in a position to install the client software

53:36SPEAKERor whatever, that's pretty convenient too, but.

53:38SPEAKER- Does it add extra, like how-

53:39SPEAKER- I don't know, probably not much.

53:41SPEAKERWebRTC is extremely low latency itself,

53:44SPEAKERfrom my understanding.

53:46SPEAKER- And it seems like it's only Chrome?

53:48SPEAKER- Yes, it is Chrome only for that browser,

53:50SPEAKERbut we've all been using the installed client

53:52SPEAKERand it's worked fine, basically.

53:53SPEAKER- That seems like the right choice.

53:55SPEAKER- It does install a system service, full disclosure,

53:59SPEAKERbut what doesn't these days?

54:02SPEAKER- Look, I-

54:04SPEAKER- So does iTunes, for that matter?

54:06SPEAKER- The number of system services I have installed

54:08SPEAKERbecause I have Adobe and Backblaze and BlueJeans

54:12SPEAKERand Zoom and Microsoft Teams touched my computer

54:17SPEAKERat some point, so now I'm infested with that nonsense.

54:20SPEAKER- Wait, you said you uninstalled it.

54:22SPEAKER- I did.

54:23SPEAKER- Are you saying there's residue?

54:25SPEAKER- I assume so, I have not found anything.

54:27SPEAKERI just have, that software made me feel dirty

54:30SPEAKERin a way that the software hasn't in a really long time.

54:32SPEAKER- Really did not have a good first experience

54:34SPEAKERwith Microsoft Teams.

54:35SPEAKER- That's what everybody's first experience

54:37SPEAKERwith Microsoft Teams is like.

54:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:41SPEAKER- I think that's it on our list for today.

54:43SPEAKER- That's the big stuff, I think.

54:44SPEAKERDo you have any experience with Rainway at all?

54:46SPEAKERThat's another one that does the same stuff.

54:49SPEAKER- No. - No?

54:50SPEAKERHave you not heard of it?

54:52SPEAKER- No, I'd never heard of it before.

54:53SPEAKERI think you told me about it the other day

54:55SPEAKERand I meant to look it up and then I didn't.

54:57SPEAKER- I'm aware of it.

54:57SPEAKERI've never used it, but I just typed it into Google

54:59SPEAKERand Rainway versus Parsec is the first like auto result

55:02SPEAKERthat comes up.

55:03SPEAKERSo you can safely assume it's pretty similar to that.

55:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:07SPEAKER- The one claim to fame that Parsec,

55:09SPEAKERI mean the Rainway has that I've noticed

55:11SPEAKERis they seem to have a habit of trying to push their app

55:13SPEAKERinto places where it's not gonna fly.

55:17SPEAKER- Nope.

55:18SPEAKER- Which is to say that they tried to put a Rainway client

55:20SPEAKERon the Nintendo Switch.

55:22SPEAKER- Oh, how'd that go for them?

55:23SPEAKER- And Nintendo was like, nah.

55:26SPEAKERAnd that's not gonna happen, actually.

55:29SPEAKER- A Moonlight client on the Switch would be so good.

55:31SPEAKER- I'm trying to remember what happened exactly.

55:34SPEAKERI don't know if they like fully pushed it into the store

55:37SPEAKERor what was going on, but they were like touting.

55:40SPEAKERThey were very much touting it as like,

55:41SPEAKERplay your PC games on your Switch,

55:43SPEAKERwhich of course that would do gangbusters, right?

55:45SPEAKERBut.

55:46SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be amazing.

55:48SPEAKER- I don't remember what happened there.

55:49SPEAKERThey were, or maybe they're just advertising

55:51SPEAKERthat they were gonna put it on the Switch

55:52SPEAKERand then Nintendo were like, no, you're not.

55:55SPEAKERThere's something along those lines.

55:56SPEAKER- So apparently there's a Moonlight Switch port

55:59SPEAKERif you have a Switch.

56:01SPEAKER- A hacked Switch.

56:02SPEAKER- Hacked Switch.

56:04SPEAKERI remember in the old days of iOS

56:08SPEAKERwhen people would release like a file,

56:11SPEAKERlike a file browser that also had MAME embedded in it

56:14SPEAKERso you could play all the MAME ROMs on your.

56:16SPEAKER- Of course.

56:17SPEAKER- Yeah, those were good times.

56:18SPEAKERSneak one in there.

56:19SPEAKER- Yes.

56:19SPEAKER- Get it past the man.

56:21SPEAKER- Those good times couldn't last forever.

56:24SPEAKER- So yeah, I guess that's it.

56:25SPEAKERIf you have questions about this stuff,

56:26SPEAKERplease send them in to techpod@content.town.

56:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:31SPEAKER- I mean, it's a lot.

56:32SPEAKERIt's pretty cool.

56:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:34SPEAKER- I feel like if I had a TV in a basement someplace,

56:36SPEAKERit would be really useful.

56:36SPEAKER- Totally.

56:37SPEAKERI mean, we're in a weird,

56:38SPEAKERwe are in a weird world right now

56:40SPEAKERwhere like this stuff is largely hypothetical

56:42SPEAKER'cause nobody's going anywhere.

56:43SPEAKERLike they're sitting right by their PCs and consoles all day.

56:48SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna tell you,

56:49SPEAKERlike that Marvel Avengers game is a perfect,

56:52SPEAKERI just wanna play something for like 30 minutes

56:53SPEAKERand wind down for a little bit at the end of the day.

56:56SPEAKERI just go smash stuff and it's fun.

56:58SPEAKER- If you play everything on the PC,

56:59SPEAKERthere is definitely a use case here

57:01SPEAKERto just like go flop in your living room

57:02SPEAKERand play it that way.

57:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:05SPEAKER- Last thing I was gonna ask just before we get out of here,

57:06SPEAKERlike, does any of this stuff tie into the X-clouds

57:09SPEAKERand stadiums of the world in your mind in any real way?

57:11SPEAKERLike I assume you're using pretty similar technology.

57:14SPEAKER- My assumption is that the FBC stuff came about

57:17SPEAKERbecause of the GeForce Now work that was done.

57:21SPEAKERI don't know what hardware,

57:23SPEAKERI mean, I know that the X-cloud stuff

57:25SPEAKERis running on actual Xbox hardware.

57:28SPEAKERI don't know what Stadia is,

57:29SPEAKERI can't remember what Stadia is running on.

57:30SPEAKERI can't remember if we're running on Nvidia or ATI or AMD.

57:34SPEAKER- I believe it's AMD for their graphics.

57:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought so too.

57:36SPEAKER- I think that's right.

57:38SPEAKER- So, I mean, I think all of it works together.

57:41SPEAKERThis is one of those weird situations.

57:43SPEAKERIt's like wireless VR hardware.

57:45SPEAKERLike the reason we didn't have wireless VR PC headsets

57:49SPEAKERat launch was that no one had ever made,

57:51SPEAKERno, there would never been a need for a low latency H.264

57:55SPEAKERencoder, right?

57:57SPEAKERAnd then once there was a need for that,

57:59SPEAKERsome people figured it out

58:00SPEAKERand it's in everything two years later.

58:02SPEAKERBut like getting from A to B took time.

58:05SPEAKER- So was that really the case here

58:06SPEAKERis that we finally just hit the tipping point

58:08SPEAKERwhere the tech got good?

58:09SPEAKER- I think probably, yeah.

58:11SPEAKERI mean, like brain brains plus problem equals lesser problems.

58:15SPEAKER- Oh, funny how it turns out like that.

58:19SPEAKERLast question. - Shocking, right?

58:20SPEAKER- Real quick, the new console is being AMD based.

58:24SPEAKERDo you expect that there is similar tech

58:25SPEAKERto this kind of direct frame buffer stuff

58:29SPEAKERthat Nvidia is doing?

58:30SPEAKERLike they've probably got some equivalent

58:31SPEAKERin those boxes, right?

58:33SPEAKER- I would be shocked.

58:34SPEAKERLike the only thing I would expect,

58:35SPEAKERthe only console I'd expect to not have anything like this

58:38SPEAKERis the next Switch.

58:39SPEAKER- Sure.

58:40SPEAKER- Right, like Nintendo doesn't care about this.

58:42SPEAKERThey have a portable, they have portable hardware

58:44SPEAKERso you don't need to take the,

58:45SPEAKERyou don't need to be able to stream the games.

58:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

58:49SPEAKER- I'm, it's funny, I would love a moonlight,

58:54SPEAKERa port of Parsec or moonlight or something

58:56SPEAKERthat lets me play games on the Switch

58:59SPEAKERis incredibly compelling.

59:00SPEAKER- Sure.

59:01SPEAKER- Like just shockingly, yeah.

59:03SPEAKER- I get it, I get it.

59:03SPEAKER- I don't think Nintendo's gonna go for it though.

59:05SPEAKER- Probably not.

59:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:09SPEAKERYeah, so if you have questions, send them in.

59:10SPEAKERAs always, thank you to all of our patrons

59:14SPEAKERfor supporting the show.

59:15SPEAKER- Yes.

59:19SPEAKER- The, I'm trying to think what was on the,

59:22SPEAKERwhat was on the Discord this week.

59:23SPEAKERI've been really busy and haven't been dipping in that much.

59:26SPEAKER- I too.

59:27SPEAKER- There was a lot of people talking about the blood sky

59:30SPEAKERand sharing photos and like we had a good conversation

59:33SPEAKERthe other day about how to actually take the photos

59:36SPEAKER'cause it turns out, one of my favorite things about this

59:40SPEAKERis that the phone auto-corrects.

59:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it was impossible to get an accurate photo

59:45SPEAKERthat really truly represented the horror of the situation

59:48SPEAKERbecause the phone brightens and de-saturates everything

59:51SPEAKERand it just kind of made it look like

59:53SPEAKERabout half as terrible as it actually was.

59:56SPEAKER- This is the problem with computational photography, right?

59:59SPEAKERThe Halite app, if you're on iOS,

1:00:02SPEAKERI don't know what the Android equivalent

1:00:04SPEAKERlets you do manual exposure stuff,

1:00:06SPEAKERwhich then fixed the problem.

1:00:08SPEAKER- Okay.

1:00:09SPEAKER- It was just how I was able to take my red sky pictures

1:00:11SPEAKERthe other day.

1:00:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it's been interesting on the Discord

1:00:14SPEAKERwatching this spread because,

1:00:15SPEAKERso this is the second time it's happened in the Bay Area

1:00:19SPEAKERin the last six weeks or so.

1:00:20SPEAKER- We didn't have the red sky like this before.

1:00:21SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, no, no, but I mean just the confluence

1:00:24SPEAKERof wildfires and heat wave situation.

1:00:27SPEAKERThis is the second time we've had that

1:00:28SPEAKERin the last like six weeks.

1:00:29SPEAKER- I don't think we're gonna have heat wave this weekend.

1:00:31SPEAKERIt's supposed to be cool.

1:00:32SPEAKER- I hope not, I hope not, but all I'm getting at

1:00:34SPEAKERis that like we went through this like six weeks ago

1:00:36SPEAKERand now people in Oregon, people in Southern California,

1:00:38SPEAKERpeople in Washington, like I think Nevada's got fires now,

1:00:43SPEAKERright, like it's kind of like more and more of the Western

1:00:46SPEAKERUnited States is now in the same boat.

1:00:49SPEAKER- Is bad.

1:00:50SPEAKER- It's a lot.

1:00:51SPEAKER- So you know what's great is our patrons.

1:00:53SPEAKER- That's right.

1:00:54SPEAKER- Especially our executive producer tier patrons,

1:00:57SPEAKERJacob Chapel, Andrew Cotton and David Allen.

1:00:59SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:59SPEAKER- We appreciate you guys and everybody else

1:01:02SPEAKERwho's supporting the pod.

1:01:03SPEAKER- Yes, thank you so much, I gotta get reading.

1:01:05SPEAKER- I know.

1:01:06SPEAKER- All thousand plus of you, I fished out my copy.

1:01:09SPEAKERIt was at the bottom of a large stack of books.

1:01:11SPEAKER- Okay, we are at more than a thousand backers now.

1:01:16SPEAKERWe appreciate you guys so much.

1:01:17SPEAKER- And they have high expectations

1:01:19SPEAKERthat I'm gonna read this book, so.

1:01:20SPEAKER- You have to read the book.

1:01:21SPEAKER- It's on the nightstand, ready to go.

1:01:24SPEAKER- I'm in the sixth chapter now, so.

1:01:27SPEAKER- Wow, okay, yeah.

1:01:28SPEAKER- It goes fast, it's really good.

1:01:30SPEAKERI think you're gonna love it

1:01:31SPEAKERor you're gonna really hate it one way or the other.

1:01:33SPEAKER- That seems hard to believe,

1:01:34SPEAKERbut who knows, stranger things have happened I guess.

1:01:37SPEAKER- I mean, we could have done Dune, that was the other option.

1:01:40SPEAKER- Ooh, I don't know, I got nothing against Dune,

1:01:42SPEAKERbut that sounds like a commitment.

1:01:44SPEAKER- Dune's one of the seminal science fiction pieces

1:01:47SPEAKERof the 20th century. - I know that, yeah.

1:01:49SPEAKER- It's very good.

1:01:50SPEAKER- It's more that I know there's a lot of it,

1:01:52SPEAKERbut I know also, I know that after Frank Herbert died,

1:01:54SPEAKERit kinda went off the rails is my understanding.

1:01:57SPEAKER- No, no, no, after the first book, it goes off the rails.

1:01:59SPEAKER- Oh really?

1:02:00SPEAKER- Each of those books is worse

1:02:01SPEAKERthan the ones that come before.

1:02:02SPEAKER- Okay, enough said.

1:02:04SPEAKER- Yeah, read the first one and be like,

1:02:06SPEAKERthat is an amazing book.

1:02:07SPEAKERAnd then whatever you do,

1:02:08SPEAKERdon't pick up any of the other Dune books.

1:02:10SPEAKERThat's my advice.

1:02:12SPEAKERAs somebody who's read way too many Dune books.

1:02:15SPEAKERI guess next week, I don't know what we're gonna do,

1:02:17SPEAKERwe don't know exactly what we're gonna do next week.

1:02:19SPEAKERSo we will, you'll find out with us next week.

1:02:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll figure it out.

1:02:23SPEAKER- But thanks for listening everybody.

1:02:24SPEAKER- Thank you so much.

1:02:26SPEAKER- Have a good week.

1:02:27SPEAKERSee you soon, Brad.

1:02:28SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:02:38SPEAKER(upbeat music)