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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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It's really about the type of network connectivity between where you are playing and where the PC is.
Eg, I have my TV ethernet hookup to my PC. Typically, I get less than 15ms latency, and I think it's usually about 8ms added at 120fps. I'm comfortable using Sunshine/moonlight for any game on this setup, and I can't tell the difference between playing on the PC or via moonlight on the TV. Fortnite or any other type of FPS is totally playable. 15ms latency might matter to hardcore or competitive FPS, but it doesn't make any difference whatsoever to my crap reaction times or shitty skills.
Now I could also play that same FPS using moonlight on my phone while I'm overseas, on the train, using mobile data in a crowded area via a vpn across the internet to my home PC, and I'd expect that to be pretty bad.
If I played that same FPS at a friend's place across town, on moonlight on their PC that is ethernet connected to his router, with my PC running Sunshine as host, the lag is going to depend on how good the connection is between his house and my house. If he's on fiber, and I'm on fiber, and there's no traffic congestion, then it could be under 30ms. Which would be unnoticeable for all but the most extreme of game requirements.
Also, what you are running moonlight on matters. Different devices will decode streams faster or slower, which can add to latency.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's about the power of the device you are running Moonlight on, and the quality of it's connection to the Sunlight PC, more than the type of game.
Yeah I was surprised at how completely playable Moonlight was at a friend's house, we live an hour apart on the interstate and we both have coax Internet with its anemic upload speeds. I was playing Tears of the Kingdom without issue. I don't even bring my desktop for LAN parties anymore I just stream my game
I was playing God of War (PC version) on my phone in obscene places I should not have been able to. People were looking at me funny on the bus when I cracked up at Atreus mocking Kratos with 'Boy, read this. Boy, what does that say!'
But so many moonlight/sunshine problems end up having the word "wifi" in there somewhere 🤣. Hardwire, dammit!
And at gigabit as well. Was having all kinds of steaming issues because it frequently spikes over 100Mbps.
It depends on the device, it's decoding abilities, how much lag that introduces and how much you're willing to accept. Counterintuitively, sometimes lowering the moonlight network bandwidth setting improves latency and gameplay.
There's a good discussion about this on reddit.
I game at 1440@120fps and 1080p@120fps, and from memory the highest I've set the network bandwidth setting is 40mbps. Also,.on some devices, using h264 and disabling HEVC works much better, as h264 is so much easier to decode.
But, you bet I'm still hardwired at 1gbps!
Thinking about it, it was probably Steam Link that was going that high. I tried Sunshine/Moonlight on a whim after getting bad performance from Steam and it's been so much better.
Could never find acceptable settings for Steam link to work.
In this case I’m talking about a hardwire connection between my PC and a Google TV. The latency is likely on the Google TV side tbh.