I've tried several times to set this up on my Steam Deck from my PC, and I just can't get it to work reliably. 9/10 times it just opens to a black screen. I've followed 20 different guides on forums, on reddit, on facebook - nothing. The only way it works reliably is if I don't use the virtual screen option, but then it looks all wrong as my main monitor is an ultrawide.
Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
81–90 of 162 posts
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so to clarify, it's Sunshine (game streaming server) but headless for linux. So if I used sunshine, and streamed a game, the display of the box running sunshine would be showing the game? and this moonshine allows us to do away with that, to be able to run headless, or to run multiple games at once or something? Is that correct?
But Sunshine _is_ headless, I would know if it weren't, I'm using it as such (albeit with a dummy plug, but that's just a hardware limitation).
The selling point of Moonshine (and some of the Sunshine forks/descendants) is that it's headless without the need of a physical dummy plug.
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#83So, 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…
Unfortunate it is still essentially impossible to share consumer GPUs with multiple virtualized hosts, which limits the utility. My dream is to build one beefy server and play old games like COD via connected thin clients
intels gpu supports vgpu with no extra licence
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#84So, 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…
> And then there's this, Moonshine, in a way doing what Apollo brings to the table but for Linux servers. What was the motivation? Games on Whales seems to work perfectly in my experience.
I've used Moonlight but didn't like having to unlock my Linux home PC to play. If I want to play remotely using my (idle) PC, what's a better solution? Games on Whales (which I'd never heard of before now, and I'm not sure if it works on Linux), or Moonshine?
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you heard about the cloud?
The cloud is just someone else's computer. Do you think there's spare GPU compute available during the AI craze?
What if steam users could offer their computers up for credit on steam? Not sure if most consumer internet connections would be up for it, but that would be an interesting model.
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#86So, 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…
Unfortunate it is still essentially impossible to share consumer GPUs with multiple virtualized hosts, which limits the utility. My dream is to build one beefy server and play old games like COD via connected thin clients
It's possible to run vgpu with modded drivers up to, I think, RTX 2xxx series.
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#87So, 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…
> And then there's this, Moonshine, in a way doing what Apollo brings to the table but for Linux servers. What was the motivation? Games on Whales seems to work perfectly in my experience.
Games on Whales runs containers, it doesn’t stream your desktop or your steam installation for example. So use case is for those that use the PC directly but also want it available via moonlight without a display connected.
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#88Ah so this is where the influx of activity comes from..
Hi, creator of Moonshine here.
I'll try to answer some common questions here instead of replying the same thing everywhere:
What is it?
At it's core it's similar to Sunshine but with one important difference: Moonshine creates its own compositor and does not rely on an existing desktop environment. The benefits:
- You do not need a running desktop environment: it can run headless.
- The compositor is created with any resolution and any refresh rate, without requiring a dummy plug.
- Because Moonshine controls the compositor, it has HDR support out-of-the-box, even if your monitor does not support HDR (ongoing development, it works in the games I tested).
- If you do have a running desktop environment, you can keep using it while streaming a game at the same time.
On a more technical level: I like the narrow focus that Moonshine has. Only one encoder (Vulkan), only one OS supported (Linux), no GUI, no compatibility with old Moonlight clients. The codebase is intentionally "lean". Of course this also has disadvantages like requiring semi-recent GPUs & drivers, only working on Linux and newer Moonlight clients, but I can live with that.
Why create it?
The short answer: a lazy girlfriend and a stubborn Linux user.
The long answer: Moonshine is a hobby project that I've been working on for a few years (first commit goes back to 2022). It was (and still is) a fun exercise and helped me learn a lot, which if it never became functional would have been a nice outcome already. In fact, in earlier README's I advise people not to use it because at the time it did what Sunshine does but worse. I removed that section when I started adding features that made it different from Sunshine.
Should I use it?
Today I would say to a new user: use Sunshine, there's tons of guides and online information and it will likely work fine for you.
If you like tinkering and trying out new things: sure, why not :).
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And then there's this, Moonshine, in a way doing what Apollo brings to the table but for Linux servers. What was the motivation? Games on Whales seems to work perfectly in my experience.
I've used Moonlight but didn't like having to unlock my Linux home PC to play. If I want to play remotely using my (idle) PC, what's a better solution? Games on Whales (which I'd never heard of before now, and I'm not sure if it works on Linux), or Moonshine?
I have server running in basement all the time. I start Games on Whales over ssh and then launch Moonlight on macOS client. You can do it completely remotely. Only pre-condition is that computer must be turned on. I tried Sunshine as well but it was too much pain and not so effortless.
Re: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used Moonlight but didn't like having to unlock my Linux home PC to play. If I want to play remotely using my (idle) PC, what's a better solution? Games on Whales (which I'd never heard of before now, and I'm not sure if it works on Linux), or Moonshine?
I have server running in basement all the time. I start Games on Whales over ssh and then launch Moonlight on macOS client. You can do it completely remotely. Only pre-condition is that computer must be turned on. I tried Sunshine as well but it was too much pain and not so effortless.
Nice, thanks! You can't do that with Moonlight in Linux, I always needed to log in to my session first in person.