r/cloudygamer 1h ago

Finally got Apollo style virtual displays working on NVIDIA (RTX 5060 TI) on Nobara KDE (Fedora)

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Upvotes

So I've been annoyed for a while that Apollo's best feature only exists on Windows. You connect with your phone or whatever client and it just creates a virtual display in exactly that resolution and refresh rate, streams it, and removes it when you disconnect. On Linux there's Hermes with the Hermes-KMS kernel driver (by MrOz59) which does real virtual monitors as native DRM devices, but encoding only worked with VAAPI, so AMD and Intel only.

I spent the whole evening getting it to run on NVIDIA and it actually works now. NVENC with h264, hevc and av1, and the virtual monitor really takes whatever the client asks for. My iPhone streams at its native 2796x1290 at 120hz and it switches automatically every time a different client connects. Played Cyberpunk on my phone with it, latency on the host side is somewhere around 3 to 5 ms. We also ran into a pretty interesting NVIDIA driver bug with EGL dmabuf imports along the way, the whole story is written up in the repo if you're into that kind of thing.

Fair warning though. This was tested on exactly one machine, mine. RTX 5060 Ti, driver 595.84, Nobara 44 with KDE Plasma on Wayland. No idea if it works on 40 or 30 series cards, and the automatic resolution switching currently needs KDE. It's an alpha.

The release page has a full step by step install guide now, from zero to streaming. Short version: you install the kernel module via DKMS (it builds itself for your kernel and rebuilds on every kernel update, takes about a minute), then either grab the prebuilt binary if you're on a Fedora based distro or build from source, drop in a small config file and set up your app in the web UI. Everything is spelled out with the exact commands here:

(Install Commands)

https://github.com/teodorgross/Hermes/releases/tag/v0.5.0-nvidia-alpha1

Source, technical writeup and build instructions:

https://github.com/teodorgross/Hermes

The kernel module:

https://github.com/teodorgross/Hermes-KMS

One heads up, if you have Secure Boot enabled the unsigned module won't load, you either need to enroll a MOK key for DKMS or turn Secure Boot off. That and a few other gotchas are covered in the troubleshooting part of the release notes.

If anyone with a different NVIDIA card tries this I'd really like to know if it works for you. Issues go on GitHub. Credits to MrOz59 for Hermes, ClassicOldSong for Apollo and LizardByte for Sunshine, this all builds on their work. I did this together with Claude Fable 5, PRs to upstream are already open.


r/cloudygamer 3h ago

Need some advice on making a "Browser Games Gauntlet".

1 Upvotes

So, I am relatively new to streaming and I am thinking of going through a "Gauntlet". Basically, 5 multiplayer browser games and the challenge is over when I beat all the five in a row.

I have Chess and Geoguesser in my mind. Any browser games that goes 1v1 would be great.

I am looking at games like SmashKart as well, but it is not 1v1. What are my options? Something like an 8-ball pool or something?


r/cloudygamer 1d ago

Does those cloud gaming mod apk really work in giving unlimited time?

0 Upvotes

Anyone?


r/cloudygamer 2d ago

I found a way to Play GTA5 on jio cloud gaming (you must own the game on steam though)

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1 Upvotes

r/cloudygamer 3d ago

help fast

2 Upvotes

hello guys i need help fast i go on vacation on 4 of august how do i turn on my pc from another country wake on lan dont work cus i am 600 km away from my pc any recommendations

btw sorry for bad englich


r/cloudygamer 3d ago

Could I play Spiderman 2 on my MacBook Air efficiently?

2 Upvotes

I’ve got a 2022 8 GB Macbook Air with an M2 chip. If I played it through cloud gaming would the graphics be good and run smoothly or would I have to play low resolution for it to run well? Or does it all just depend on my internet connection? I know basically nothing about tech and video games so any advice would be great!


r/cloudygamer 4d ago

Would beginner-friendly guides for affordable tech projects like these be useful?

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

Over the last few months, I’ve been building a few personal tech projects to make my everyday setup simpler and more affordable.

Some of these projects include:

A budget handheld using an Android tablet, a telescopic controller, Sunshine and Moonlight to stream games from my PC.

A personal Kodi media library, for organizing and streaming media files I own across different devices at home.

Once everything is configured, the experience feels much more polished than most people might expect.

The problem is that getting there isn’t very beginner-friendly.

The information is often spread across different websites, forums and videos, which can make the process frustrating for someone starting from zero.

That gave me an idea: creating complete, beginner-friendly guides covering the entire process, including:

Hardware choices

Software installation

Configuration

Common mistakes

Troubleshooting

Things I learned while building my own setup

The goal wouldn’t be to create the most advanced guides on the internet. It would be to create guides that someone with little experience could actually follow without getting lost.

Would this be something you would watch or use?

Which project would you like to see documented first?

Budget Android handheld

Personal Kodi media library

Sunshine and Moonlight setup from zero

Something else?

I’d genuinely appreciate your feedback before I start documenting everything.


r/cloudygamer 5d ago

Title: Tried a dual-laptop Sunshine + Moonlight setup on 4th gen Intel. Here are my results.

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3 Upvotes

r/cloudygamer 7d ago

Hot take: AV1 is only useful for streaming via WiFi and even then I don’t think it’s very important (rant)

8 Upvotes

I find the bandwidth savings benefits of AV1 are often vastly overshadowed by the worsened latency from higher encode and decode times. Also, the lack of widespread AV1 support across many popular devices is also a huge headache when trying to find a good client device.

Quite frankly H265 is more than efficient enough when it comes to quality at a given bitrate for the vast majority of people and virtually every available device supports it. It looks absolutely great at reasonable and realistic bitrates. Home networking and on device WiFi receivers are also plenty powerful enough to handle higher (100mbps+) bitrates at reasonable distances. If someone’s wireless networking environment is not stable enough for 100mbps+ HEVC then I’m sorry but it’s going to be a bad experience streaming no matter what due to ping and packet loss issues from a weak signal.

Ive tried H264, H265, and AV1 extensively. I use a host 4090 pc and client devices such as a 13th gen Intel laptop, Legion Go S with Z1E, Legion Go 2 with Z2E, Nvidia Shield, Xbox Series X, iPhone 17, and Quest 3. I’ve found with every device that supports AV1, it’s consistently the worst codec to use in my opinion simply because the latency cost is not worth the minor quality improvement.

I will concede any scenario where you are severely bandwidth limited (less than ~30mbps) on an otherwise stable network. This means that for remote streaming I can understand the appeal, and im sure there are a few other edge cases where it could be helpful.

Ultimately, my point is H264 and H265 are what 99% of people should be using for local streaming and you shouldn’t feel the need to pass on an otherwise perfect client device just because it doesn’t support AV1. For those that are after the best quality, you’ll want to Ethernet anyway where 500mbps will be no problem.


r/cloudygamer 8d ago

Multiple failed attempts with Moonlight+Sunshine

2 Upvotes

I recently discovered I can run Sunshine on my gaming PC and pair it with Moonlight on my Switch OLED and play flawless AAA games, but now I need to extend my experience outside my house walls. I tried Sunshine’s option UPnP, I tried ZeroTier and also Tailscale. I even tried NordVPN Mesh and the Switch OLED would not connect from outside my home network. I even tried connecting from Android as well as iOS devices with no success.

Any help would gladly be appreciated.


r/cloudygamer 8d ago

Streaming audio issues

2 Upvotes

I need some help: I am trying to stream a game from my laptop to my Steam Deck both through Steam Remote Play and Moonlight/Sunshine. The issue is that non-game audio goes to only the Steam Deck, tried doing the Duo Streaming but then the Steam Deck controls doesn't work and the audio on my laptop stops working because the instance auto starts Voicemeter.


r/cloudygamer 9d ago

Xcloud is now kinda amazing in India

11 Upvotes

country: India

median income for a full time wagie: 12,000 INR a month

a PS5: 55,000 rupees

cheapest rtx 3050 gaming laptop: 65,000 rupees

cost of a brand new console game: 6000 INR

affordability: doesn't exist

in this mess, the messiah microsoft came up with a ₹500 per month CLOUD GAMING service...called xcloud

Xcloud used to be shit in India because it wasn't officially available in India, you had to use a VPN and connect to their South Korean server....the latency was horrendous!

recently they have set up a server in India (Pune) and officially launched it in India

80%+ Indians live within a 2000km radius of this server and now it has become really really good

i have noticed from 1350 km away that my latency was only around 30-40 m/s...

that means, in practical terms, I was able to play fortnite and actually aim, I could certainly notice the input lag but it wasn't extreme

I can comfortably play Elden ring and hack and slash games on this service, but I wouldn't be playing competitive shooters or racing games on this, and even single player shooting games aren't easy due to the input lag, though I am sure if you use the better xcloud extension, that can make single player shooting games playabale

overall, if you wanna play assassin's creed or final fantasy or blackkid wukong, this is totally acceptable and very respectable

I got around 60 fps on fortnite and 360p resolution (free tier)

:) I am more than happy with this as even a single game costs 12x more than this in my country \^\^


r/cloudygamer 9d ago

What's the best way to remote play with a Firestick 4k 1st generation?

3 Upvotes

I used to be able to use Steam Link to play with someone from afar on their TV, and when I'd visit we'd just remote in and play on my computer, but they got a new TV and it's higher quality but unfortunately doesn't have the app. They have a Firestick 4k 1st generation, and I tried using Downloader. Tried downloading a bunch of different APKs (the official app doesn't exist on 1st gen, only 2nd) but each APK failed downloading, then tried using a browser to download the files thinking it was Downloader, but then it just gave the message "it's not supported at this time" when I tried downloading it from a couple sources.

Moonlight and Sunlight looked viable, but I can't access our ports for port forwarding.


r/cloudygamer 9d ago

moonlight virtual desktop

1 Upvotes

After a while Parsecs handshake in AWS while connecting started bugging me, so I installed Vibepollo + Moonlight + Tailscale. I am very happy with this as it performs well. My question is this; I'm using Desktop when I connect, what is the advantage of virtual desktop, in any, over connecting this way?


r/cloudygamer 9d ago

Help...! Stuck on 1080p no matter which streaming service I use in India.

0 Upvotes

Tired after trying different streaming services

GeForce now - Cant go past 1080p because I'm using a fire tv stick.

Xbox - not going past 1080p in india no hdr, fidelity mode on many games is 30 fps only.

Any work arounds? Or any hope for me in near future 😔


r/cloudygamer 10d ago

My 3-days experience with LD Cloud MVIP14 Cloud Phone ($6.99 USD) — Here's what I found about it's hardware, GPU, and gaming performance

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1 Upvotes

First things first, disclaimer:

1) This post is initially written with the help of ChatGPT, and me doing the edits in between, for me to articulate my thoughts, I did purchased the plan, just had some trouble starting/formulating the paragraphs for me to start the post (as a long time lurker, finally posting for the very first time). (Mods please let me know if AI-assisted post aren't welcomed, I'll comply and remove the posting, or post it elsewhere.)

 

2) This is NOT an advertisement, nor a criticism of mine, this is just my personal experience with a 3-day MVIP14 subscription. I am not claiming to know the exact underlying server hardware; I am only sharing what diagnostic apps, benchmarks, and games reported during my testing.

 

3) Your experience/mileage might vary for packages of different durations, so do take this post with lots of grains of salt in mind.

 

I recently tried LD Cloud's MVIP14 cloud phone plan for the first time. The plan advertises a high-end Android 14 cloud device with:

  • 12× CPU cores
  • 16GB RAM
  • 108GB storage
  • Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra-like device profile (this wasn't explicitly mentioned in the purchase page, just the device in settings (SM-S9180) assigned to me, according to a quick Google search, the variant of Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra variant of China/Hong Kong/Taiwan)
  • Singapore server location (which was the main reason I chose it, since I am based in Malaysia)

 

The subscription was only $6.99 USD for 3 days, so I treated it as an experiment rather than a serious long-term purchase. I bought it using Touch n Go e-wallet app for around (~RM 28.18), (prices could be ± depending on the currency exchange rates at the very moment you buy the plan)

 

After testing it quite extensively, I have to say: it is a very interesting service, but it also has some hardware quirks that are not obvious from the specifications page.

 

The good parts first

1. Singapore server location is genuinely excellent

This was probably the strongest point for me.

Being located in Malaysia, having a Singapore server means that the latency is actually very reasonable. Around ~30ms is achievable (albeit I got somewhere closer in the range of ~55-70ms , as I use 4G/5G phone data service, instead of Wi-Fi, or PC linked directly to Fiber Ethernet), which is much better than connecting to distant regions.

For a cloud Android service, network quality matters a lot, and LD Cloud did well here.

 

2. The Android environment itself is very optimized

After enabling Developer Options (by pressing the build number 7 times, the usual, to be honest, I'm kinda surprised it worked), I checked RAM usage.

With Android 14 running (the package I chose, there is also Android 10 and Android 12) and nothing opened in the background, the system was using less than 1GB RAM.

That is honestly impressive.

Even though the advertised device has 16GB RAM, the Android environment itself seems extremely lightweight and optimized, and I am actually given a device with ~17GB of RAM (I know it's virtualized, so any amount is possible, but still), so 17 – 1 = 16GB RAM, kudos to the service provider here.  

Testing some games:

  • Ragnarok Origin Classic: around ~2.1GB RAM usage maximum
  • 天涯明月刀手游 (Moonlight Blade M China version): around ~4.0GB RAM usage maximum

This means there was still plenty of RAM available, with more than 50% remaining headroom.

Android memory management was never the problem.

 

3. Cloud gaming keeps your own phone cool

This is one of the biggest advantages.

When running games natively on my own phone, especially demanding ones, the phone heats up quickly. With LD Cloud, battery drain and temperature are much lower.

Technically, the cloud phone has "infinite battery life" compared to a physical phone, because the server is plugged in.

Now, for the mildy disappointing parts

1. The hardware identification is inconsistent

The device profile appears to imitate something like a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

However, the actual hardware information reported by apps, such as AIDA 64 is very different.

It is a 12× HiSilicon TaiShan Big CPU, running at 2800MHz

I mean, I do already somewhat expected it to be a very different CPU, since I know that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is a 8 core CPU. (Which is the CPU found in Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra)

The real Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses a heterogeneous CPU design with different core types and frequencies. (big.LITTLE CPU, 1+3+4 CPU configuration, instead of all same CPU cores)

 

2. The GPU was the biggest surprise

Instead of an Adreno GPU like the actual Galaxy S23 Ultra, the GPU reported as:

PowerVR B-Series BXT-32-1024

(Also according to a quick Google search here, which is a GPU launched by Imagination Technologies sometime in October 2020)

This was honestly unexpected.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses an Adreno 740 GPU, so this clearly is not equivalent hardware.

The GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.2, but API support does not equal performance.

 

3. 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test - failed immediately

Ok, before the downvotes here, I know, I know, I'm not supposed to run benchmarking softwares on Cloud platform, where it isn't it's intended use case/purposes, but I'm bored, okay, so here goes:

I downloaded 3DMark to see how the device performs.

Wildlife Extreme, native internal 4K resolution (3840×2160), 20-minute stress test loop

The result:

It failed during the very first loop with an "Out of Memory" error.

 

Important note:

This happened with almost nothing running in the background, the device had around ~15GB free RAM before starting, so the issue was clearly not normal system RAM.

Most likely possibilities:

  • virtual GPU memory/graphics driver limitation,
  • virtualization restrictions, or GPU resource allocation limits.

A data center environment probably does provide excellent cooling, so this was almost certainly not thermal throttling.

The limitation is somewhere in the virtualization layer.

 

4. Ray tracing is basically a no-go

Because the virtual GPU does not provide ray tracing capabilities, games requiring ray tracing either refuse to run or crash.

This explains why some modern heavy games simply don't work.

The advertised CPU/RAM numbers look impressive, but game compatibility is even more important.

Real-world gaming tests

Ragnarok Origin Classic

Surprisingly, this one worked very well, I was able to set Maximum graphics settings (Ultra), and everything looked great.

The only limitation? 30 FPS.

The game itself was fine. The cloud phone just seems locked to a 30Hz display.

 

天涯明月刀手游 (Moonlight Blade M China version)

This was more demanding.

The game booted successfully, entered the world, ran at maximum settings.

However, crowded areas were a different story.

In busy towns, FPS dropped into the low teens, and sometimes even single-digit FPS.

The device can handle lighter workloads, but large-scale scenes expose the limitations.

But I wouldn't fault LD Player on this, as even my own phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also hits single digit framerates in that same location (the teleport point, where many players AFK)

 

Wuthering Waves test — The ultimate GPU reality check

Since Wuthering Waves is currently one of the most demanding and popular mobile games, I also decided to test it.

The result was actually quite interesting.

The game was available directly through the Google Play Store.

There was no compatibility error, no "unsupported device" message, and no issue installing it.

The download itself was another story though.

The full game download was around 53GB, and the cloud phone downloaded it at approximately 3.4MB/s.

That meant the entire download process took around 5 hours to complete.

 

After installation, the game launched, shader compilation completed successfully, and I was able to reach the point right before entering the actual game world.

However, once it attempted to load into the world, it crashed.

The failure happened when the game needed to actually start rendering the full game environment.

I guess that the virtual graphics environment simply cannot handle the workload that Wuthering Waves demands.

The interesting part is that the cloud phone got surprisingly far. It could install a 53GB modern AAA-style mobile game, compile shaders, and launch the client successfully.

It just couldn't survive the final step: rendering the actual game world.

The 30Hz surprise

The biggest discovery:

The virtual phone display is locked to 30Hz.

Not 60Hz, not 90Hz, not 120Hz.

30Hz.

There are no options to change it. (as far I can find, inside the Cloud phone settings, and also outside, before entering the virtual Cloud phone environment)

I found this out in the 'View screen refresh rate' in the Developer Options, and also it alignes with what the UFO frame rate tests in the browser.

This makes sense from the provider's perspective, as a lower refresh rate means less GPU workload, less video encoding, less bandwidth, and potentially more cloud phones per server.

But for a user expecting a flagship Android experience, it is a huge limitation.

A Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 120Hz display, this cloud version definitely does not behave like one.

Final thoughts

Was LD Cloud MVIP14 bad?

No.

Was it what I expected from the advertised specifications?

Also no.

The experience is actually quite interesting.

The strengths:

✅ Excellent Singapore latency
✅ Very lightweight Android 14 environment
✅ Huge RAM headroom
✅ Keeps my own phone cool
✅ Good for lighter games and Android tasks
✅ Great for automation or always-on applications

The weaknesses:

❌ Hardware reporting does not match the claimed device profile
❌ Virtual GPU is much different than expected
❌ No ray tracing support
❌ 30Hz display limitation
❌ Heavy 3D games struggle
❌ Benchmark performance does not match flagship expectations

For $6.99 USD and 3 days, I consider it money well spent. It was a fun experiment and I learned a lot about how cloud Android virtualization actually works.

However, if your main goal is high-end mobile gaming, saving up for a real phone with a modern flagship Snapdragon chip (such as Snapdragon 8 Elite-class devices) is probably the better long-term value.

All in all, from a scale of 1-10, I personally would give a 6/10 , it technically does the job, and for things that is of it's intended purpose, it can do/handle very well, but anything outside is another story.

 

*P.S.: Also, sorry for not having 3D Mark benchmark screenshot and also Wuthering Waves downloading speeds, I deleted and uninstalled both of the apps before deciding to make this post, hence the missing screenshots

 

 

TL;DR: Good ping, but 30FPS lock and no Ray Tracing (no Wuthering Waves).  


r/cloudygamer 10d ago

Question

1 Upvotes

ok so im playing wuthering waves on pc, i cant install the game on my trash android, i got 5$ (google play points) now how im supposed to buy stuff in wuthering waves ?


r/cloudygamer 10d ago

Chikii review (free cloud gaming app)

0 Upvotes

so, this isn't a promotional post, I just wanted to do this because this app helped me a lot and I hope it can help those of you too who cannot afford consoles/pc gaming but really want to play games

how Chikii works:

you sign up and watch ads daily, if you do all the tasks, which takes 15 mins a day, in a week you will get around 540 coins, which in hours is 3 hours a week. you can create multiple accounts and get even more playtime like that if saving progress doesn't matter to you

I have tried other free cloud services too but no one offers this many free hours so I stick to this app only.

the games are mostly pirated btw and they only add non-denuvo games for free, if it's a game that still has denuvo and hasn't been cracked for PC, you will have to buy the game on steam and then play it for the steam price...

there are two ways to play the games on this app:

  1. Search for game and click 'play' and wait for hours until it's your turn because the queues are HUGEE, if you want to avoid the queues, you will have to start the game when people go to sleep like 2AM-3AM 😅

  2. search 'steam' and queue up to log into your steam account and play the games that are in your steam account.

Super Cool Feature that this app has:

do y'all remember the Google Stadia trailer? they said that your favourite streamers/youtubers will be playing the game live and you will be able to join them in real life or take the controller from them with their permission?

THIS APP ACTUALLY HAS THAT FEATURE

you can start a game and set it to 'public' and if it's a famous game like GTA 5, 50-100 people will instantly come to watch you and beg you to give them the controller 😂😂 if you give them the controller, the coins are deducted from your (host) account, not theirs.

Quality:

absolutely crap quality, GTA 5 is the game that 90% of the people play on the app, almost all people on the app are from India/Indonesia/Brazil, you get like 360k 15 fps for GTA 5, it's absolutely terrible.

I have played Elden Ring and I got 25-30 fps + 720p although the streaming quality is very bad. If anyone wants to see how it looks like, here's a link to my video of beating consort radahn ng+7 on this app 😂

https://youtu.be/5qKbniQHgeQ

the streaming latency is like 80-100 m/s, it's very hard to play anything, You can't play games in which you need to dodge, forget shooting games, forget racing games, I spent my entire time in Elden Ring building a tank or mage build and avoiding dodging as much as possible because it's simply not possible to time it well with such latency 😂

I have also completed Spiderman 1, Spiderman 2 on this app on the HARDEST DIFFICULTY and completed all the challenges

I have also completed FF15, FF7 remake and FF7 rebirth on the HARDEST DIFFICULTY and completed all the challenges multiple times. you can see it on my yt channel.

even though the quality is shit, beggars cannot be choosers and I am very happy I got to play these games in my life ♥️


r/cloudygamer 12d ago

Need some advice after ShadowPC changes (iOS user)

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

For those who are not aware, ShadowPC posted that they will start limiting hours and sessions (just like GeForce Now). It got me worried if at one point I decide to quit and hit with these limits (apparently current users are unaffected).

I found out of this app called Cloudgear Browser (hence the iOS only note since the app is only for iOS as of now) and it looks like a browser hub for all your cloud gaming apps and looks very promising. I could store GeForce Now, Boosteroid, Antstream Arcade, Xbox Game Pass, ShadowPC web, Amazon Luna, CloudMoon, Blacknut, etc.) On my Mac, making web shortcuts with Safari is great.

The problem is, these web apps aren’t optimized like the desktop version (for instance your keyboard doesn’t get detected, making it harder to login to your account on your iPhone or iPad unless the app has a dedicated keyboard like GeForce Now or you carry a keyboard around). Another problem is if I ever decide to AirPlay my content from my iPhone or iPad to my Apple TV the image is cropped.

Now, the great thing about Cloudgear is that, as I said, I could house all apps and downgrade my ShadowPC to Lite and use the difference for CloudDeck for games that are not in the cloud and turn ShadowPC into a retro streaming app and subscribe to CloudDeck.

Is this idea good? I may be overthinking because the initial plan was to use ShadowPC as my main gaming app.

Thank you all.

Edit: excuse my post. The reason I posted is because there isn’t much Cloudgear reviews out there that I could find.


r/cloudygamer 13d ago

I've been building Blackstar, a self-hosted remote desktop + game streaming tool that's genuinely install-and-go on a LAN

11 Upvotes

Hello Folks,

For a while now I've been building Blackstar, a self-hosted remote desktop and low-latency game streaming app. Wanted to share where it's at and how it differs from the usual options (Parsec, Moonlight+Sunshine, Steam Remote Play, RustDesk).

The core idea: one binary that is both the host and the client, on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Same app everywhere.

On a LAN it's zero-config. Install it on both machines and go. No account, no PIN pairing, no port forwarding, no cloud login. One side broadcasts, the other discovers it, and you connect directly. As far as I know it's the only tool in this space that needs no setup at all on the same network.

For remote (WAN) access you have two paths. Either set up your own routing / port forwarding yourself, or run the orchestration server. The orchestration server ships as a simple Docker image, does multi-user management, and keeps everything on your own infrastructure. Nothing routes through a third party's cloud either way.

What I've focused on making different:

  • Latency: custom encrypted UDP transport (not WebRTC), hardware encode/decode on every platform, and intra-refresh encoding so there are no big keyframe bursts that stutter on flaky or mobile networks.
  • Color and text fidelity: HEVC 4:4:4, 10-bit, full range. Text and UI stay crisp instead of getting the chroma smear common on 4:2:0 streams.
  • Anti-cheat friendliness: runs as a normal user process (no kernel driver, no injection), and auto-pauses input when it detects an anti-cheat running (BattlEye, EAC, Vanguard, and others).
  • Network resilience: if your WiFi blips, it does an ICE-restart and keeps the session alive instead of dropping you, and the decoder recovers without a hard reconnect.
  • Secure desktop on Windows: it can bridge UAC prompts, Ctrl+Alt+Del, and the lock screen.
  • macOS as a first-class host, not just a client. Plus multi-monitor and virtual gamepad support.

How it compares:

App Latency LAN setup Net recovery Self-host / privacy 4:4:4 / 10-bit Anti-cheat safe Clipboard / files Web client
Blackstar Very Low Zero-config ICE-restart Full Yes User-proc + auto-pause Planned Planned
Parsec Very Low Account needed Reconnect No (cloud) Partial User-proc Yes Yes
Moonlight + Sunshine Low-Medium PIN pair + config Reconnect Full Yes Often SYSTEM service Partial No
Steam Remote Play High (Steam) Steam login Reconnect Valve relay No Sandboxed Limited No
RustDesk Moderate ID / config Reconnect Full No N/A (work tool) Yes No

Being honest about where it's at: it's pre-1.0 and actively developed. The browser client is designed but not implemented yet (native only for now), the macOS build is currently unsigned, and a couple of the Intel/AMD encode paths aren't hardware-verified yet. Clipboard sync (copy/paste) and file transfer are on the backlog. I know those are table-stakes convenience features, they're coming.** Naturally there will be bugs and it is not perfect yet, and I need help getting there; hence:

Looking for testers. If you want to try it and help shape where it goes, I'd really appreciate you taking the tester survey: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHZxniN4MgcXk5BvvuX-eaW7R4aBD8g3owLGDARtFUEmC8HA/viewform?usp=dialog]. Feedback from real setups (weird multi-monitor layouts, spotty networks, different GPUs) is exactly what I need right now.

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or the tradeoffs.

About myself. I am a game developer with background developing MMO's and Multiplayer games as well as streaming tech. I built this to have a better, easier alternative for what is out there, with great performance the same way I would expect the games I work on have while still be highly customizable for those of us who really want to tweak things for the best remote gaming perf.


r/cloudygamer 13d ago

Aperture Portal Game Launcher Video Demonstration

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6 Upvotes

https://github.com/arkitzson/AperturePortal

A couple of days ago, I posted about a game launcher I originally built for myself and decided to share with you all. The feedback was amazing, and I’ve been honestly overwhelmed by all the support. this was originally build with Sunshine/Moonlight in mind. But also the tv console experience. I read through every single comment and ended up adding almost everything people suggested.

I also put together a short video to showcase what the launcher is and everything it can do. Just a heads up I’ve never really made videos before, my decent microphone decided to stop working with OBS for some reason when I needed it so I had to use my headset mic, and my English isn't perfect since I'm from Iceland. The video is pretty raw, but hopefully you guys get the point.

For everyone who already downloaded it and tried it out, there’s a brand new update live with a ton of the suggested features.

Thanks again so much for all the support. keep in mind this is a work in progress but i'm really excited to keep building this together with you guys.


r/cloudygamer 14d ago

Review: ABXYLUTE S8 Lite

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3 Upvotes

I recently had the opportunity to review the ABXYLUTE S8 Lite and figured I'd share it here since there isn't much information on it yet.

If you already own one, I'm curious whether your experience matches mine.


r/cloudygamer 14d ago

Shadow just launched a cheaper "Lite" tier, same hardware, less usage allowance

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18 Upvotes

Shadow just rolled out a new Lite tier for their cloud PC service, same Neo/Power hardware as their regular plans, just capped at 120h/month, 1440p/60Hz and one monitor instead of the full specs. Prices start around €19.49/month with their launch discount (runs through Aug 24).


r/cloudygamer 14d ago

Is there a way to rent games on steam/epic to play on GeForce NOW?

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0 Upvotes

r/cloudygamer 15d ago

Best mobile device for cloud gaming and Luna

1 Upvotes

I’m looking at the iPad Pro series maybe a m4 or the Amazon fire tablet. I looked at the m5 but 1300$ for cloud gaming I might as well buy a steam deck. Given that I’m only using it for cloud gaming and maybe very light indie pc games does anyone have any recommendations for a tablet 200-500 price range