Play it on the big screen
On the Steam In-Home Streaming group, Valve shared a few pages of details on how its streaming setup will work. They started off by explaining what streaming is, and why you would want to use it:
“Any two computers in a home can be used to stream a gameplay session and this can enable playing games on systems that would not traditionally be able to run those games. For example, a Windows only game could be streamed from a Windows PC to a Steam Machine running Linux in the living room. A graphically intensive game could be streamed from a beefy gaming rig in the office to your low powered laptop that you are using in bed. You could even start a game on one computer and move to a more comfortable location and continue playing it there.”
One of the biggest concerns with streaming across a network, is how responsive the game will be. Valve says that “We’re working on ways to dynamically adapt to network conditions but sometimes the best way to improve your streaming experience is simply to reduce your game’s video resolution or reduce the number of frames per second (FPS) used in the stream.”
Currently, Valve claims to have streaming working on some networks with a “10-20 ms” delay, which is higher than the delay you get from a TV or monitor, but not by much. These speeds would definitely be able to handle playing games, with only a slight lag.
The final page in the announcement is a Q&A section, that covers some really basic questions.
So what do you think? Will you be using this at home? I love the idea of being able to stream games to my laptop. I could play Skyrim while I sit outside, and that’s probably the only way to make sure I get some sunlight next summer.
