Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

How are you getting 4K on a Mac?

I'm also playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia and I've been quite positively surprised by it. However, I'm not really sold on Stadia generally yet. There's definitely some input lag and I can feel my mouse movements being "spongy". I'm also having a hard time driving, but I don't know if that's the input lag or just the game. Also, even if the game is running at the best possible graphical options (which Cyberpunk 2077 isn't), you're still just getting a compressed video stream, so dark gameplay doesn't look good (https://0x0.st/iFRT.png).

No regrets though, since I paid 50€ for it and I'm getting a free Chromecast Ultra and a free Stadia controller.

View on HN

You can use Chrome extensions to modify Stadia, I used Stadia+[0]. You can force 4k that way even though it's not supported.

I don't have any noticable input lag but I'm on 70/30mbit fiber with 3-4ms ping to stadia.com. Sometimes the stream quality drops for a sec, but no noticeable frames or audio dropped.

I agree with the darkness being to bright, couldn't fix it with the gamme correction either. I have a feeling the 4k does a little better job in that regard. But overal it's not bothering me to much.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stadia%20-extensio...

This makes more sense now. I also noticed lag. Not everyone has access to fiber internet for various reasons.

I'm really lucky we got fiber connected a few weeks ago, I'm in the Netherlands so broadband is pretty decent overall, but in rural area's connection options lag behind. I tried the game Control streaming demo on a Switch on my previous connection (15/1Mbit DSL with 30/30Mbit 4G backup, avg 30-50ms ping) and though it did work, but it was far from how I experience Cyberpunk now. I wouldn't have bought into streaming gaming with that connection.

In the US, poor internet is mainly due to political reasons. We have a duopoly when it comes to telecoms and ISPs. I’m still disappointed that Google gave up on a nationwide Google Fiber rollout.

W're heading to a duopoly here as well, but stuff used to be pretty regulated. So w'll have to see where w're heading, but I think regulators/politics will pick up the pace in a few years again. Also it's not as big over here, you can compare our entire country to a American big city metropolitan area. Rural here is maybe 2-5km from the nearest city.

I have a 1000/100 fiber connection and the best ping I've gotten is 6 ms. Most often I get 16 ms though.

16ms is basically 60fps. That should feel pretty smooth.

Gotta multiply it by two though, since you need a round trip from your computer -> Stadia -> your computer to get feedback right?

Ping is measured round-trip. So the game should get your input in ~8ms, process it, then it will take ~8ms for the feedback to return to you.

Depending on how user input is processed in a game, this problem can be mitigated.

Oh wow, never realized this..but I guess ping in one direction is hard to measure anyway since it'd require sync'd clocks. TIL!

Not just hard, impossible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_speed_of_light#Theorie...

Ping to stadia.com? Is that where the stream is coming from?

No, but I thought it would be a good reference. I just ran a game and pinged the instance that was streaming (120.37.116.136), funny enough it ping was worse (8ms) than the ping to stadia.com (3ms). Also the IP is no longer pingable once you stop streaming the game. MTR shows something like 20 nodes inbetween me and the instance compared to 6 with stadia.com.

Hm, interesting. Thanks for the details.

Same here, playing on Stadia (4k). I tried it on 3 devices: - windows 10 PC over Ethernet - no lag - MBP 16 over WiFi - lag - pixel slate over WiFi - lag

The lag is not too bad, but still noticeable. I only play on the PC now. I have no idea how to fix WiFi lag.

I've played a little on my TV with the CCU over Wifi but not enough to determine lag, my Mac is hooked to gigabit straight to my router.

They do recommend 5Ghz for Wifi and being as close to the AP as possible. I can image if your AP is behind a wall or in a closet or different floor you get noticable delays as signals come in via reflections rather than directly.

Both were 30cm from the wifi access point, it's on the desk next to them :)

Mac wifi lag happens due to location services. Disabling it fixes most of the lag.

https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-on-Chrome/Fixing-stut...

Huh. That's a good trick, but I wonder what the reason is. What's going on under the hood with the location service?

This. At work, on a Windows PC with a wired connection, the experience is seamless. At home, on macOS over WiFi, it's only playable (without hiccups, I mean) during the night when people are asleep, but it's still not as smooth. I've played through the entire game, as well as RDR2 and the Metro series using Stadia. I have a high-end gaming desktop and would still not want to install these games. Makes the work/play distinction clearer and my machine cleaner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com