Game Streaming
This article is a Player Guide. The Homecoming Wiki takes no responsibility for the content within.
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Game Streaming
Another way to play City of Heroes in the same building/house/office is to use a game streaming setup.
For most mobile devices, this works best with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse versus using a controller or trying to use a touchscreen with the Click to Run option enabled. (Mouse support is broadly available since Android 9 and iOS/iPadOS 14.)
Basics
In Game Streaming, you'll involve two devices:
- The Host system, containing the installation of Homecoming: City of Heroes, your game streaming app installed in Host Mode, and your hardware graphic card. For Cloud-Based Game Streaming, a remote PC Instance will need to be prepared by running Homecoming Installer at least once before you begin.
- The Client system, which has the Game Streaming app installed. For the client to stream your game you will need to leave your gaming PC powered on during play, and the keyboard/mouse will be accessible to a bystander while streaming.
The Host system may need to be kept updated to the latest software for both the Game Streaming app as well as the video card driver. If your client doesn't connect, make sure these updates are installed first before you try again.
Methods
| Self-Hosted | Cloud-Hosted |
|---|---|
| Parsec | Shadow PC |
| Sunlight1 | Loudplay |
| Steam Link | Stim |
| airgpu |
Same concept for both, only difference is where the game is installed. Self-Hosted means you install the game on a PC you own, Cloud-Hosted provides a remote PC you install Homecoming on before you play. Clients typically are NOT interoperable. (You can't use Shadow PC to host Homecoming and Parsec to play it, unless you installed Parsec on the Shadow PC as well.)
Self-Hosted Game Streaming apps are usually freemium (since hosting both computers yourself makes very little impact on a server outside of your home). Cloud-hosted is usually a fixed price per month, with tiers of service to upgrade on output. Some cloud-hosted services offer a limited trial but none of them offer a free tier.
1: Moonlight is end-of-life due to hardware encoding access changes from both NVidia and AMD. Sunlight has inherited the Moonlight project clients and is continuing development as a software-only solution.
Not Advised
Low-Bandwidth optimized Remote Desktop apps such as:
- Mac Screen Sharing/VNC,
- Microsoft app (Better known as Remote Desktop Connection or RDP),
- LogMeIn, TeamViewer, etc.
All of these were designed to cut down on bandwidth use and will suffer high latency and low frame rates incapable of game play.
Non-Starters
Homecoming is not available on any commercial game streaming service. This includes, but is not limited to:
- GeForce Now
- Amazon Luna
- Steam Remote Play
Note that Steam Remote Play is not the same as Steam Link, which allows any remote PC app to run using Desktop mode. (Running Homecoming over Steam Link is unsupported by Valve; doesn't mean it won't work, but tech support isn't offered if something goes wrong.) Steam Remote Play is only offered for titles hosted/distributed by Steam; City of Heroes ended distribution on Steam back in 2012 when the Retail Game was shutdown.
Also, Homecoming is not available on consoles, so XBox App and Playstation Plus are also in the non-starter camp.
Video Considerations
As a concept: your computer is the bottleneck of the session. Game streaming is going to deliver video playback AT that same resolution and framerate or lower. You cannot use Game Streaming to get performance out of your machine it isn't capable of in the first place. (If you're using a GeForce RTX 3050 on the Host system, it's not going to have the framerate and performance of a RTX 4090 on your Client system.)
Likewise, you need to consider the following:
- Resolution:
- 4K or higher - reduce playback resolution to 2K (2560x1440) or lower.
- 2K - for 60fps, a Gigabit Home Network is required. 40Mbps is needed for 60 frames per second (FPS).
- 1080/1440 - you can operate at 60fps with 20-30Mbps of bandwidth.
- 720 - you can operate at 60fps with 10Mbps.
- Framerate:
- The frames per second offered depends on several factors.
- Cloud-based services offer 30fps or 60fps, with 120fps services offered in beta (primarily XBox, which isn't supported).
- Self-Hosted services, 120fps is dependent on your network and hardware availability. 60fps is possible with most current hardware and 30fps being the default.
- For all the bandwidth values above in Resolution, cut in half when using 30FPS. (2K at 20Mbps, 1080/1440 at 10-15MBps, 720 at 5MBps.)
- If your gameplay gets jittery, disconnects, or halts, turning your framerate down is the quickest way to stabilize the connection, however if you need to get below 30fps, turning your resolution down may also be necessary.
- The frames per second offered depends on several factors.
Game Streaming may not be viable for your network if your video is turned down to 720/30fps and you are still having trouble playing. There may also be issues unrelated to your bandwidth that impact game streaming use. (Wi-Fi equipment and interference, traffic prioritization, QOS, use of Local DNS/DHCP vs. Static addresses, etc.) that may be manageable on your network equipment or that may involve your ISP for support.
Network Considerations
Your house network must be capable of at least 5-10MBps of free bandwidth internally PER SESSION to permit game streaming in the same house (2 people streaming? At least 20Mbps available).
- For self-hosted, this is NOT your Internet Speed, but your internal network speed between network hardware and computers.
- For cloud-based, BOTH your internal network speed and external download speed must have enough headroom for Cloud Gaming to work.
Network Details:
- Wi-Fi: using Wi-Fi 5/6/7 is recommended (802.11 AC/AX/BE), and the use of Wi-Fi Mesh equipment with a node plugged into every room you wish to stream from instead of using a single router (unless your house is very small). A strong signal is needed to maintain 60fps video at any size. (Most online video and TVs transmit/receive movies and television streams at 30fps.) Use of Wi-Fi Range Extenders and/or Wi-Fi Routers leased from an ISP usually are not sufficient for wireless Game Streaming.
- Ethernet: your NIC card, port on a laptop, and router must be at least 1Gbps. 100Mb Network hardware in a house with multiple devices may not have sufficient headroom for Game Streaming use.
- Use of 4K video will be extremely difficult at any capacity. It is strongly recommended to use a 2K resolution or lower while streaming.
As a generality, your home network is only as fast as your slowest device. If you cannot stream well, the following may help:
- replacing any switching or routing devices that can't exceed 100Mb,
- replacing 10/100 only NICs on systems that will accept faster ones,
- switching older laptops and appliances to Ethernet or disabling their network connection,
- replacing old cabling (use CAT-5E or CAT-6),
- finally, any Wi-Fi devices at 802.11b/g/n should also be disabled/removed if they can't be upgraded or accept a faster USB adapter.
Playing remotely away from home
For play outside of your house your upload speed (not download) must exceed the actual bandwidth used to stream the game in your house. If it does not, game play will be jittery or fail to stream out. (Your download speed only matters to the client device outside your house.) To solve this, you'll need to turn your host resolution and frame rate lower until your upstream bandwidth is low enough for stable play.
For Self-Hosted Game Streaming apps, while some services like Parsec can negotiate a connection outside of your home network, for zero-account software apps you may also need to configure your uplink device or router to allow traffic outside, which is a security precaution.
This section is unnecessary on Cloud-Hosted Game Streaming, as the Host PC is based at a datacenter that is already configured for remote gaming use. The same demands to play a cloud-hosted PC at your house are the same at work, on cellular broadband, at public Wi-Fi Hotspots, etc.
Methods No Longer Available
As of 2023, both NVidia and AMD have discontinued their hardware-based game streaming support. NVidia has dropped GameStream from their GeForce Experience client, and AMD Link support has been removed from the Adrenalin Software Suite. While both cards retain hardware video encoding features, they're only used in video products going forward (Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, etc.)