Weird question probably but here goes :
I’m discovering the joy of having a Dock, it’s great!
But what’s even better is I can just get my PC to stream more powerful games to my Deck (that the Deck would otherwise struggle with)
It works flawlessly (zero input delay, or rather not noticeable), better than Steam Link / Remote Play (I get input delay on this), and I haven’t tried Moonlight
It’s also so much more convenient than moving my PC to the living room (where the TV is) and plugging it there!
So I’m like wow Order of the Sinking Star is awesome, but what if I played games that my Deck sometimes has trouble with? Like I could run Witcher 3 Remastered with some better settings!
So I guess I’m not asking for great Steam Deck games, it’s more like, what are games that my PC could run that feel great on controller, that I would stream to my Docked Deck?
Thanks!!
Well, the new version of WoW (forever) is coming out soon and it has native controller support. It’s got more horizontal progression so you can play at a slower pace without being left behind. I’m going back after many years away… I’ve been thinking about some way to play it on the TV (3 floors lower than the PC…). I see folks playing the beta on the Steam deck but with just the dock you wouldn’t get more than 1080p medium settings, so this is very interesting information. My house has separate WiFi access points linked by ethernet over coaxial.
… So if you aren’t using steam link or moonlight, what exactly are you using?
Remote Play from my pc to the steam deck which is basically the successor to the Steam Link!
basically I don’t have steam link directly on the TV (because somehow it creates input delays) but have the Deck as an intermediary (which doesn’t have input delays)
This is my exact setup at the moment. I’ve been playing a bunch of Rogue Driving, Elite Dangerous and Succubus Successor: Delilah’s Juicy Journey.
I completely forgot about Elite Dangerous, it sounds perfect for it
Yeah Yeah spacesim - it IS Ideal for Succubus Successor: Delilah’s Juicy Journey tho
If the PC is close enough, wouldn’t it be better to just plug the TV in as a second monitor?
That’s my main issue it’s in another room 10 meters away
The answer is really just any game that is well suited to controller + TV. The aspect of streaming to the Deck is largely irrelevant since, as you mentioned, the experience feels so close to native.
I used this type of setup to pkay Harold Halibut, the Quantic Dream games (Detroit, Beyond Two Souls, Heavy Rain), Elden Ring (+ other soulsborne), and anything else that doesn’t run at its full potential directly on the Deck.
Harold Halibut takes up a shocking amount of hard drive space and uses an inordinate amount of resources for what it is.
Maybe it’s poor optimization, or maybe that’s just how it has to be if you’re going to do actual, real, stop motion for everything.
But goddamn
Youre right I realize I tend to try and give too much context sometimes lol, thanks for the list!!
Not answering your question, but related: I mostly use my Steam Deck with a dock, TV, and controller. The only issue I’ve really had is that it doesn’t always run the fan as needed, and then the CPU will throttle when it gets too hot - with more demanding games. It happened a lot with Diablo IV and more recently with Need for Speed Heat or Palworld, less so with games like Stardew Valley, Casette Beasts or Pizza Possum. I bought an external fan that forces it to cool (https://jsaux.com/products/fan-cooler-for-steam-deck-gp0200) and haven’t had any throttling issues since. The noise is a little annoying sometimes though.
Answering your question: the above listed games are fun, and easily played with a controller.
That’s very interesting, I have basically the opposite of you: my Deck will turn fans on at any chance so after a while it gets annoying sound wise, I never really looked at the fan curves but I should really do that
Here’s a suggestion that doesn’t even begin to address your question, have you considered a long HDMI cable to connect your TV in your lounge to your PC directly? Best of both worlds, comfortable seat in front of the TV, no input delay, play anything your PC can handle without middlemaning through the deck.
No that’s a great idea, and I agree that would be ideal ; the only problem is that the layout of the place doesn’t really work, lemme do a quick floor plan on paint
idk if attaching an hdmi cable to the ceiling would work
Hello I do not have answers for you, I just want to say I find your illustrations delightful
Haha thank you! I love playing around with paint
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this but HDMI is just Cat-6 with a fancy hat. You can run cat-6 cabling through your attic, down the walls, etc., as if you were setting up a standard Ethernet run. Then, slap some rj-45 to hdmi adapters on each, and voila! Or you could just put proper hdmi heads on the cable ends and skip the adapters.
EDIT: Amazon product link with diagrams.
Hdmi is not like cat 6. Hdmi 2.2 has bandwidth of like 96Gb/s. Youre not going to be transmistting raw video and audio over cat cable. (You might get hdmi 1.4 over it)
But if OP was fine with wifi streaming not going to get HDMI 2.2 quality anyways, and it’s hard finding hardware for it on pcs still.
It comes down to what trade offs OP is willing to make, and for many would be a viable option.
Wifi streaming uses efficient compression to shove video and audio over ethernet, and easily achieve 4k @60hz, at the cost of lower bitrates. But For 4k @60 you need atleast hdmi 2.0, which is common in any gpu made in the pass 10 years.
If op is fine with 1080p @ 60, then hdmi 1.4 is enough. Also, they make hdmi over optical, so would you chose using cat cable?
Even HDMI 2.1 is nearly 5 times the throughput of cat 6.
Never thought that’s possible (well I’m not well versed in cables and electricity soooo), thank you very much for the tip!
If you measure it and it is less than 10m (the physical limit of hdmi without a repeater) then you might consider a floor cable canal. They usually come in a variety of colors, don’t require adheisive or screwing and are just simple things to keep people from tripping on cables
I have one of these on a doorway, to connect a pc to a tv and it works good enough
Didn’t think of a cable canal at all, and there’s a doorway along the wall perpendicular to the TV so it would fit nicely there, I’ll think about it thanks!
By the way just because the official limit for HDMI is 10m, that doesn’t mean that a longer cable can’t work. I’ve been running a projector for decades, which was connected with a15m cable for literal decades. It might work, it might not, you’ll know when you try.
Usually the link either works or it doesn’t. The picture doesn’t get bad. It’s a digital signal, it either gets decoded correctly or not. In rare edge cases you might get a signal to drop occasionally though if it’s too long.
Fiber optic hdmi cable works well over long ranges. To secure cable I just got some cheap plastic clips with adhesive, since I didn’t feel like drilling holes.
I played borderlands 4 with exactly the setup in the post with a wifi 6 router and while the latency was noticable it wasn’t enough to make borderlands unplayable.
Could you swap the tv and seating so the tv is on the same wall as computer?
The cat 5e / cat 6 hdmi adapters are incredibly cool! If you can run above, below, or around this would be a great solution too.
(Please don’t run wiring under carpet for everyone’s safety).*Yes, I know HDMI is low voltage, but I’d rather people takeaway the “don’t do this” vs. the nuanced risk.
If you are in US, you can buy a 48gbps 50 meter fiber hdmi for 200 bucks, and run it along the bottom of walls from pc to tv and put some masking tape on it.
Expensive, but would work nicely. There would still be question of wireless controller working since there’s a wall b/w tv & pc.
I’m not but I can probably find something similar in western Europe! Thanks!
50 m fiber optic would be a nice clean option with it possibly having enough length to use some cable clip adhesives to clip along the baseboards instead of taking the direct straight route to the TV where people would be walking over the cable.
These are the type of clips I used to secure my fiber optic hdmi cable to the baseboard to the TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2xP4cWoJtU
If you want it to be less visible you could use cable raceways, but I was lazy and didn’t feel like spending more than I had to.
Search for ‘Active optical HDMI cable 20m’, you’ll be greatful for extra on each end and the cable is very thin cable, just never kink it. You can get up to 48Gbps 8k 60hz 12 bit color depth. This cable would be easy to hide under a rug or tack along the floor board around the walls or even ceil.
If you don’t need crazy resolution and frame rates you can get wireless HDMI extenders but they can get pricey.
Have you considered a projector? Just saying, I’ve got one recently, and your floor plan seems ideal for that. Also, as a bonus point, you may have a much bigger screen, for fully immersive experience.
Yeah I think a projector will be a long term goal, I’d love to have a clean wall instead of the black tv square
oof, 10m is the limit of what hdmi can do without degrading. you’d need a repeater.your current setup is probably better unless moving the pc to the tv is an option.
Wouldn’t you also need some kind of dongle for the controller to have a good connection?
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XVI like this and it’s been perfect. It just became Deck verified very recently but that’s a stretch.
Steam has a list of games that are “Controller Friendly”. I mean the Library view in Steam client, next to “All Games” list. On your Steam Deck it lists games that are verified for Steam Deck, but on PC client it lists games that are Controller friendly in general.
You can create a custom Collection for that too, a list that is available on all systems you log in. Go to “All Games” view, click “Fliter” (or X button), scroll down to “Hardware support” and enable filter “Full Controller Support”. Scroll down and click “Save as Dynamic Collection”. Name it and save it. Now this is a dymanic collection, which means it will automatically expand with new added games that fit this criteria. I would say all games from this list should fit your requirement and use case of being playable with a gamepad.
Oh very cool, I’ll check the games in there, thank you for the tip!!
I streamed Expedition 33 to my deck when it was my shift during the night to look after our newborn whilst they were sleeping.
Honestly can’t remember much of it since that period of time was a blur, but what I do know is the streaming worked great, although I had to change a couple of settings as games would sometimes freeze. I think it was something to do with the encoding and decoding, so you may have to look at that if you have the same issue.
I’ve been playing a lot of expedition 33 lately. The steam deck can play it directly but I’ve been mostly streaming from my main desktop to my steam deck for better graphics.
This is the first time I’ve thought about this, but you’ve made me think I should try this games like Kao or Bubsy4D or even just R&C Rift Apart.
edit: These run natively, I misread your post. Apologies.
Vampire Survivors
Slay the Spire
Children of Morta
Dead Cells
Don’t those run natively on the Deck just fine? No need to stream from a PC. OP is asking about heavier games.
Yes, sorry, I completely misread.
Currently using sunshine/moonlight to my Rog Ally for Dawnwalker. I also use my Xbox with moonlight to stream occasionally. Just about any Unreal engine game runs rough on handhelds due to stuttering, so I use my desktop and stream it. The vast majority of the games I play work great with a controller.
I use Moonlight on my Xbox, and have run a USB extension cable down to the TV from my PC for the Steam Controller puck, so I can have minimal input lag. 😁
When I was injured civ 6 on a controller was a great time to just sit and play and enjoy.
Oooh I didn’t think the controls would translate well but I’ll try it out, thanks for the rec!!
Oh I just realized that was with the original steam controller with one touchpad acting as mouse!
The touch pads are important! But steam’s controller support is actually incredible and you can play with any controller given you fiddle with it enough.
All good thanks for the followup!
The new star Wars racer would probably be dope, or one of the Redout games. You could see if Elden Ring will run with the full graphics instead of the fog version it usually plays at on the deck.
