Homebrew RELEASE Moonlight-Switch - Nvidia Game Stream client

[Soler37]

Can someone explain why there's an option for 120FPS under settings>FPS if the Switch cant handle more than 60? (using XITRIX 1.0 release)

Also a couple of questions in regards to best use:

1. When streaming from outside my network / inside my network, what are suggested/recommended settings for bitrate/video codec/decoder threads.
2. Does Moonlight work better on Android as I've seen others claim? I tried it on switchroot lineage OS but I didn't do too much testing, didn't find that much of a difference. (I OC'd when in Horizon)

 

[Paffo]

Can someone explain why there's an option for 120FPS under settings>FPS if the Switch cant handle more than 60? (using XITRIX 1.0 release)

Also a couple of questions in regards to best use:

1. When streaming from outside my network / inside my network, what are suggested/recommended settings for bitrate/video codec/decoder threads.
2. Does Moonlight work better on Android as I've seen others claim? I tried it on switchroot lineage OS but I didn't do too much testing, didn't find that much of a difference. (I OC'd when in Horizon)

i didn't test v1.0.0 yet, but compared to the previous version, running the standard moonlight under L4T Ubuntu had much better performance and more stability compared to the NX homebrew.

 

[Soler37]

i didn't test v1.0.0 yet, but compared to the previous version, running the standard moonlight under L4T Ubuntu had much better performance and more stability compared to the NX homebrew.

I understand that it has something to do with 10mb upload limit but I'm not sure at all, I wonder if there's a fix to it

 

[XITRIX]

Can someone explain why there's an option for 120FPS under settings>FPS if the Switch cant handle more than 60? (using XITRIX 1.0 release)

Also a couple of questions in regards to best use:

1. When streaming from outside my network / inside my network, what are suggested/recommended settings for bitrate/video codec/decoder threads.
2. Does Moonlight work better on Android as I've seen others claim? I tried it on switchroot lineage OS but I didn't do too much testing, didn't find that much of a difference. (I OC'd when in Horizon)

It has 120 fps option because app is going to become a cross platform and 120 fps option was added for laptops and iOS devices

 

[Soler37]

Ah I see, so it will compete with Parsec

 

[el_jojoh]

So this is doing my head in and I can't find any clear information on it.

No matter what framerate I choose in app before launching whatever I want to stream, I get lowered expected frames, decoded etc. Rendering frames stick at 60, no dropped frames.

I'm running from host pc to router by ethernet, then 5Ghz wifi (waiting on lan adapter to test) to Switch.
Generally 30fps reads out around 24/25, 60 reads our between 50/55, and 120 usually around 90/100, but have seen that suddenly start to drop for no apparent reason.
There's nothing clogging the 5ghz channel my router is on, my GPU is running fine on host end with plenty of headroom, changing settings on host client doesn't seem to matter. Even OCing the switch doesn't seem to affect it, and this is all at 720p.

Is the wifi truly that bad on the V1 switch?

 

[el_jojoh]

So this is doing my head in and I can't find any clear information on it.

No matter what framerate I choose in app before launching whatever I want to stream, I get lowered expected frames, decoded etc. Rendering frames stick at 60, no dropped frames.

I'm running from host pc to router by ethernet, then 5Ghz wifi (waiting on lan adapter to test) to Switch.
Generally 30fps reads out around 24/25, 60 reads our between 50/55, and 120 usually around 90/100, but have seen that suddenly start to drop for no apparent reason.
There's nothing clogging the 5ghz channel my router is on, my GPU is running fine on host end with plenty of headroom, changing settings on host client doesn't seem to matter. Even OCing the switch doesn't seem to affect it, and this is all at 720p.

Is the wifi truly that bad on the V1 switch?

Just to add, since this I've tried using a LAN adapter docked and it seems to not have made a difference.
Admittedly I'm not getting as much time to test and troubleshoot as I'd like but thought it sufficiently strange to warrant mentioning.

EDIT: So with some testing after this, for some reason I'm beginning to think the estimated host/ incoming/ and decoding framerates don't really matter, or may on some systems present the wrong read out.

I did a couple of takes between wireless and wired connections, on both steam big picture and Elden Ring, taking note of the moonlight debug numbers to see if the 3 latency numbers all added up to less than 16ms.
Even when the framerate didn't match the game rendering rate on host, or the rendering rate on moonlight, it still felt smooth and playable. Maybe not completely native smooth, but pretty damn close, close to what felt like 60fps; going from mouse to controller makes this hard to compare.
(I'm guessing when I go over all the numbers I'll see an obvious link between increasing bitrate settings, latency slowly reaching and bypassing 16ms, and the perception of smoothness dropping as the tests go on.)

I then tried to increase bitrate bit by bit and it still seemed to operate well. After a few tries I decided to increase NVENC preset in sunshine to P7 and full res two pass, just to see what happened. This did affect fluidity of the game but also on the host side where framerate dropped. Weirdly gpu usage wasn't anywhere near maxed out so not sure what happened there as I believed NVENC ran solely on GPU with little overhead.

More tests will have to be done, both to determine the actual cause of the host fps loss at max encoder settings, and more importantly to see if running moonlight at 120fps could potentially lead to higher stream settings being usable due to the lower latency.

TLDR: If you're like me and new to streaming, and you suffer with mismatched numbers in debug view, maybe it won't actually affect your perception of the stream if you just play it. If it still bothers you use the latency numbers to adjust you stream settings to stay within one frame 16ms

 

[JonathanOrtiz]

do i need to have higher pc/laptop specs to play this?

 

[Nickky9x]

I have experienced "Bad connection" while launching and playing AAA Games (Ghost of Tsushima, Marvel Spider Man) althought the settings was at 720p. I've tried some lightweight game such as Legend of Heroes Trails in The Sky then everything worked like charm even in 2k setting.
Is there any necessary setting in my PC or Switch to play AAA games?

 

[Chrisssj2]

@XITRIX
Hey there. So i use viture pro xr to use moonlight to stream my pc. now touch controls are not an option because it switches the screen of to docked mode. are there alternative ways to navigate the desktop in this case?

 

[Waicol]

@XITRIX
Hey there. So i use viture pro xr to use moonlight to stream my pc. now touch controls are not an option because it switches the screen of to docked mode. are there alternative ways to navigate the desktop in this case?

You can tap - and + at the same time so you can enter into mouse input mode so you can move your cursor with the left stick and have mouse clicks on ZL and ZR.

 

[gouki99]

Still such a magical app.

 

[maguuma]

Latest Horizon version seems to have broken this app, getting "this application does not support the current abi" on hbmenu and it won't launch.

EDIT: Just realized there's a "Moonlight-Switch-hos21" nro file in the repository lol, that one seems to be working, silly me

 

[Zumoly]

That's a great app. Did you know you could game locally without internet? Kudos to the dev!

 

[doeman]

my gamepad is not detected as xbox controller. is there a way to force it?
otherwise, it works pretty great but input latency is pretty high; probably because I am on wifi? (the switch is less than 1m from the wifi access point though); is there a way to enable stats overlay to see the latency, jitter etc..?

 

[Jaxmc]

That's a great app. Did you know you could game locally without internet? Kudos to the dev!

what do you mean?

 

[Zumoly]

what do you mean?

Well I've been playing Prince of Persia 2008 lately in the living room with little to no latency using the laptop hotspot offline. I don't use the router which has more latency. I directly connect the Switch to the laptop's wifi.