As I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Sony's streaming service,
I thought I'd post some notes about. The short version is, streaming
works fine, controller support is stupid.

Longer version, this seems to work pretty well, graphics are pretty and
lag is less than I can perceive. Occasional video glitches do
happen. Looking at bandwidth usage, it seems to use about 24 Mbps max,
when running full screen on my 1440p monitor. HDR isn’t selectable in
the game’s settings which is a shame. Windows Task Manager shows GPU
load up to 50% but I don't hear a corresponding fan noise. This is just
video decoding after all so 50% GPU usage doesn't seem accurate.

Controllers though, well, that’s a different story. I must’ve read it,
but conveniently forgot. Namely that Sony’s PS5 controller, the
DualSense is not supported! Not knowing this, I got one and it didn’t
work. And I had messed up the package too so I couldn’t return it
either since the store accepts only “resaleable packages” as returns.

So then I tried Horizon Forbidden West and my now ancient Xbox 360
controller worked just fine. Quite a surprise but it doesn’t have the
DualShock/DualSense touchpad. That was actually fine in the intro part
of the game since I had no need to mess around with anything,
inventory, map, skills, crafting, not needed. And the intro goes on
for a while.

But eventually, I needed that touchpad and tried a couple of
controller emulators. But nada, didn’t work, couldn’t find a way to
map the touchpad to a keyboard key. And the emulators were so odd I
wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be possible or not or if needed to
pay something to have that feature.

So then, more googling and found a mention of DualSenseX and that works
fine, it turns a DualSense into a DualShock 4 which PS Plus deigns to
support. But the setup is a little buggy. Sometimes, if the controller
is connected via Bluetooth, in the middle of the game, it just says a
controller was disconnected and that’s usually that for BT. Windows says
the controller is connected, DualSenseX says the same but PS Plus
doesn’t agree.

This behavior seems to have ended or at least lessened. It could be, if
the DualSense is anything like Sony headphones that the battery
indicator comes uncalibrated from the factory. I had this experience,
new phones said 40% battery left and then promptly turned themselves
off.

Anyways, I can switch to USB cable with a little fiddling and at least
the controller’s battery life is no issue then.

Oh yeah, DualSenseX is a freebie version of the tool, no longer
developed. It’s been renamed to DSX and is sold on Steam for a
fiver. Didn’t splurge yet but I'm considering it. Really it feels like
Sony should fix the support for their freaking controller *and* pay
the DSX dev.

So all in all, pretty good gaming experience and a few months of the
PS Plus service is still a lot less than a console that I'd barely use.

On 3/2/2024 2:44 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
>
> As I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Sony's streaming service,
> I thought I'd post some notes about. The short version is, streaming
> works fine, controller support is stupid.

> Longer version, this seems to work pretty well, graphics are pretty and
> lag is less than I can perceive. Occasional video glitches do
> happen. Looking at bandwidth usage, it seems to use about 24 Mbps max,
> when running full screen on my 1440p monitor. HDR isn’t selectable in
> the game’s settings which is a shame. Windows Task Manager shows GPU
> load up to 50% but I don't hear a corresponding fan noise. This is just
> video decoding after all so 50% GPU usage doesn't seem accurate.

The video may be upscaled which saves bandwidth, though it's not clear
as Sony claims newer games can be streamed at 4k. PS3 games though are
native 720p and upscaled.

I kept meaning to try it on one of the kid's computers as their GPUs are
much older or non-existant, but supposedly it shouldn't even be using
your GPU as the video is streamed.

> Controllers though, well, that’s a different story. I must’ve read it,
> but conveniently forgot. Namely that Sony’s PS5 controller, the
> DualSense is not supported! Not knowing this, I got one and it didn’t
> work. And I had messed up the package too so I couldn’t return it
> either since the store accepts only “resaleable packages” as returns.

Yeah, I did the same thing, I've got DualSense as what I read it should
work. Instead of using the not very good software 'fix' I bought a
Dualshock for $14. I don't like the controller as it's too small for my
hands, and I don't like the placement of the sticks/buttons as compared
to the xbox controllers, I've had to do finger contortions to use some
of the combos in some games.

> So all in all, pretty good gaming experience and a few months of the
> PS Plus service is still a lot less than a console that I'd barely use.

Yeah same, there appears to be some input lag in some games, so I'm not
sure it works that well for all the games, but some of it is appearant
on the older PS games when looking at videos of them, such as
BloodBorne. Those can be played on the PS5 better, but they only stream
from or as if from a the older PS.

I'm still thinking about buying the games and console used playing the
games I want then reselling the whole lot, but I'm not sure that would
work in the current everything online and tied to your account world of
consoles.

There's really only 2 games though, Demon Souls and Bloodborne with the
DLCs. I already know I'm not a huge fan of base BB, but people say the
DLCs are much better, and Demon Souls is a bit mixed on reviews, some
people feel it's a bit too much of a proto and not that good compared to
DS1+, so it'll probably remain just something I'd like to give a try for
historical purposes unless they ever remaster for PC.

With the success of ER and interest, who knows, maybe that will happen
some day. If it does, I just hope I'm still around and have enough
faculties to both play and enjoy them.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

On 3/2/2024 9:57 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> On 3/2/2024 2:44 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
>>
>> As I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Sony's streaming service,
>> I thought I'd post some notes about. The short version is, streaming
>> works fine, controller support is stupid.
>
>> Longer version, this seems to work pretty well, graphics are pretty and
>> lag is less than I can perceive. Occasional video glitches do
>> happen. Looking at bandwidth usage, it seems to use about 24 Mbps max,
>> when running full screen on my 1440p monitor. HDR isn’t selectable in
>> the game’s settings which is a shame. Windows Task Manager shows GPU
>> load up to 50% but I don't hear a corresponding fan noise. This is just
>> video decoding after all so 50% GPU usage doesn't seem accurate.
>
> The video may be upscaled which saves bandwidth, though it's not clear
> as Sony claims newer games can be streamed at 4k.
>
My immediate knee-jerk response to that is "They may be willing to steam
it at 4K to you but can your bandwidth handle it?"

(And I'm sure that the fact that the construction to make fiber-optic
even possible in my city is only now underway has nothing at all to do
with my cynicism on the subject.)

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> writes:

> On 3/2/2024 2:44 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
>> As I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Sony's streaming
>> service,
>> I thought I'd post some notes about. The short version is, streaming
>> works fine, controller support is stupid.
>
>> Longer version, this seems to work pretty well, graphics are pretty and
>> lag is less than I can perceive. Occasional video glitches do
>> happen. Looking at bandwidth usage, it seems to use about 24 Mbps max,
>> when running full screen on my 1440p monitor. HDR isn’t selectable in
>> the game’s settings which is a shame. Windows Task Manager shows GPU
>> load up to 50% but I don't hear a corresponding fan noise. This is just
>> video decoding after all so 50% GPU usage doesn't seem accurate.
>
> The video may be upscaled which saves bandwidth, though it's not clear
> as Sony claims newer games can be streamed at 4k. PS3 games though
> are native 720p and upscaled.

I think 24 Mbps is about right for 4k video. PS Plus has all of two
graphics settings for graphics quality, one of them is GPU upscaling.

> I kept meaning to try it on one of the kid's computers as their GPUs
> are much older or non-existant, but supposedly it shouldn't even be
> using your GPU as the video is streamed.

Uh, GPUs (even the puny ones) have dedicated hardware to accelerate
video decoding so of course it makes sense to use that instead of
software decoding. And that's actually the second graphics option in PS
Plus, GPU accelerated video decoding. Well, they say "rendering" but for
video that should absolutely include decoding.

So about the GPU load shown by Windows, what Windows shows for GPU usage
when just decoding video seems a little excessive. I've noticed at work
too when in a Teams meeting and someone's sharing their screen, that's
video decoding too but GPU usage is surprisingly high.

On 3/2/2024 3:45 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 3/2/2024 9:57 AM, Justisaur wrote:
>> On 3/2/2024 2:44 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
>>>
>>> As I've been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Sony's streaming service,
>>> I thought I'd post some notes about. The short version is, streaming
>>> works fine, controller support is stupid.
>>
>>> Longer version, this seems to work pretty well, graphics are pretty and
>>> lag is less than I can perceive. Occasional video glitches do
>>> happen. Looking at bandwidth usage, it seems to use about 24 Mbps max,
>>> when running full screen on my 1440p monitor. HDR isn’t selectable in
>>> the game’s settings which is a shame. Windows Task Manager shows GPU
>>> load up to 50% but I don't hear a corresponding fan noise. This is just
>>> video decoding after all so 50% GPU usage doesn't seem accurate.
>>
>> The video may be upscaled which saves bandwidth, though it's not clear
>> as Sony claims newer games can be streamed at 4k.
> My immediate knee-jerk response to that is "They may be willing to steam
> it at 4K to you but can your bandwidth handle it?"

They do specifically mention that you may want to stream at lower
resolutions for that reason.

>
> (And I'm sure that the fact that the construction to make fiber-optic
> even possible in my city is only now underway has nothing at all to do
> with my cynicism on the subject.)

There's been fiber optic in my city for probably a decade now, of course
both places I've lived in that time here were just outside of that
service area.

What would help me more currently would be ethernet to my router.
Unfortunately my gaming desktop isn't in it's ultimate final location
currently, and there's no reason to wire the room it's in other that it.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'