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Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

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Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#51

Post by krzyk »

mapBasketWand wrote: post #14
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #12

I'm down to try this new rust server. It seems to replace either Sunshine or the more recent fork Apollo. They both work fine Note that Moonlight also has a fork, Artemis. I'm genuinely not sure what difference Sunshine/Moonlight has vs somewhat newer Apollo/Artemis, but kind of just posting here to let folks know there are already some fairly active forks from Sunshine, the classic way to host a server for Moonlight…

Apollo has native support for virtualized displays, which is handy for a headless server… I just switched this weekend from Sunshine so I didn’t have to go buy a $10 dummy hdmi dongle to fake a display

The same for Game on Whales.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#52

Post by saghm »

gadtfly wrote: post #31
PalmPilotProMax wrote: post #25

So, to sum up: First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves. Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms. Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Bas…

I would love "normal linux user remote desktop session suitable for gaming using the host's GPU". Nothing seems to do exactly that, though this (moonshine) seems like it might be the closest yet. Can it run a desktop environment as the "Application" that it's streaming?

I've been running Sunshine on my Linux desktop for a while now and connecting to it with a SteamOS handheld and my laptop for mostly gaming for a while now. From what I can tell, the biggest difference with Sunshine and Moonshine when running on Linux is that Sunshine doesn't use a separate desktop instance per stream; by default, the streams will be mirrored to the clients, although there's a way to work around that somewhat by setting up a fake display output device with the boot parameters and a custom EDID with the specs you want (there's at least once repo where someone has a large set of them dumped from thousands of different monitor brands/models) and then setting up Sunshine to output when mirroring, which effectively means that only the remote client will actually have anything displayed.

It took a fair bit of iteration to get my setup to the point where it mostly works the way I like, but it's been pretty stable for months now. I game exclusively on my handheld streamed from my desktop, and on my local network the input lag is pretty consistently low enough that I don't notice any difference from when I had tried to play things locally on SteamOS, only I can easily max the graphics settings on most games I play (and on the rare ones that do struggle, there's often not a ton of downside to lowering the resolution a bit due to the handheld only being 1200p).

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#54

Post by Mashimo »

PalmPilotProMax wrote: post #25

So, to sum up: First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves. Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms. Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Bas…

It seems like Sunshine and Moonlight are now active again, and have a release more recent then Apollo and Artemis.

On windows, is it possible to use the server at the same time as someone is remote gaming? Most virtual display solutions I found just turn the server display off.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#55

Post by silentkat »

ducktective wrote: post #37
PalmPilotProMax wrote: post #25

So, to sum up: First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves. Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms. Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Bas…

Thanks for the summary! Does anyone happen to know how to make a Windows machine, the extended display of a Linux machine? Both machines are on the same network. I'm looking to use a Windows laptop as a mere HDMI monitor for the Linux laptop. I don't need gaming/streaming requirements. Like, can anyone list our options in 2026 as the parent comment did? I assume one can use this Moonshine on the server (Linux laptop)…

Yes, I do this. Got used to my work laptop being my second monitor under my main but at home use a desktop. I do it with a Mac laptop but moonlight on the laptop in my experience is not the finicky part of the setup. I do it with basic sunshine connecting to a headless display, though. I think moonshine sets up the virtual monitor for you? Never used it.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#56

Post by saghm »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #39
PalmPilotProMax wrote: post #25

So, to sum up: First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves. Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms. Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Bas…

I setup a fake display on my fedora instance (inside proxmox) at boot time (boot/kernel args) that mimics the specs of my real display. Sunshine sees it as a real display so I can unplug everything from the box except power and lan cable. No hdmi dummy dongle or virtual display driver needed. Using linux as a gaming server works fine!

I've been doing almost the same exact thing for a while, except on Arch and with a different EDID than my actual display drive my handheld that I stream to is 16:10 rather than 16:9 like my actual monitor. After a couple of months something changed (maybe a kernel update, although I never fully tracked it down) where the kernel no longer respects the parameter about which display to use for the initial LUKS decrypt and tries to use the fake display no matter that, which prevents me from unlocking it until after a timeout of a few minutes. I've made this somewhat less annoying by setting up unlocking via ssh on a local IP so that I can just initiate a reboot and then do other things around the house without having to wait around next to it until it times out and falls back to the real display, but it would be really nice to not need to wait in the times when I don't have any need to do anything else for a few minutes. Did you ever happen to run into this timeout issue, and if so, do you know how to fix it?

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#57

Post by pprotas »

klipklop wrote: post #45
PalmPilotProMax wrote: post #25

So, to sum up: First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves. Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms. Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Bas…

Woof, so which one is the “good” one?

Sunshine is the stable, maintained one. That should work fine for most users.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#58

Post by Helmut10001 »

I am very happy with Moonlight/Sunshine combo. Runs neatly on my RTX 4000 Pro GPU Server. The only thing I miss is automated resolution adjustment to connected Clients, but I was able to script this with Home Assistent Windows client.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#59

Post by pprotas »

I’ll try this out later. Mostly interested in the controller handling, will this pass-through my Steam Controller or emulate it to an Xbox controller like Sunshine does?

If it’s pass-through like the README makes it seem, then I’m instantly sold.

Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight

#60

Post by gabriel666smith »

jader201 wrote: post #21
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #17

The Sunshine/Moonlight combo allowed me to stream emulated, upscaled SSX Tricky (PS2 game) from my desktop to an (at least 7 year-old) Android streaming box as smooth as silk. The only downside was that the game had to be running, visibly, on the screen of the desktop machine, meaning the desktop is unusable for anything else - ie. if someone else wanted to play the game while I was working on the desktop. This appea…

Side note: I miss SSX. Such a great franchise, and sad that EA Big shut down (and that no one else picked it up). Tricky was probably my favorite, but they were all great.

Word. In terms of game level design, I think SSX Tricky’s Tokyo Megaplex is one of the most interesting, complex, simple, comprehensible, fun, beautiful, and downright cool pieces of work of all time.

I can’t have played it in fifteen or twenty years but I still think about Tokyo Megaplex every month or two. It tapped into something deep in my brain.

Thanks for the reminder of it. I won’t know what heaven looks like until I’m at its gates, but when I die, I hope I get to ascend via that weird updraft tube, and ride those red and white candy cane rails for eternity. If not, God might have missed a trick. What an incredible piece of work that game is.

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