16 replies to this topic

[orcrist86]

So last night I decided to try playing MWO on my living room TV and Home Theater. The advantage of playing with this setup is the enormous sound and picture . Normally this would mean attaching my Desktop to the TV, but I was in search of a slightly more elegant and cleaner solution. I don't want to go into lengthy detail on my experience but I do want make some observations about what playing this way is like before I give the step for setup.

Home streaming introduces some lag, but not a lot if your system is set up well.
Brawling is still an option, and missile boats can still work, but sniping may be too difficult.
The game text is disturbingly small, the UI is not intended for use when sitting on a couch 12 ft from your TV, even if it is a 52 Inch screen.

Setting up Home Streaming

Install steam on both computers you intend to use. I used a desktop and a budget ASUS laptop with HDMI out.

Add MWO to steam, but ensure that the file used is not the patcher or updater. Steam supports some games with menus, but MWO is not one of them. Instead select mwoclient.exe

You will need to add a command line argument to the exe. "-nopatch" and "-fullscreen"

The line will look as follows: "[DRIVE]:\Games\Piranha Games\MechWarrior Online\Bin32\MWOClient.exe" -flowthru -fullscreen

On the computer you have attached to your TV select stream.

If you get a stream timeout warning then go to your main PC and manually select the game window. Streaming should start on the remote PC.

Enjoy your epic stompy robot action.

Here is my setup in action:





As a side not I played at 720P resolution rather than 1080P because I wanted to leave overhead for the streaming, I recommend the same if you max out your resources when playing normally.

My system:
AMD FX 4100 overclocked to 4GHZ
AMD HD5770 2GB
Windows 8
8GB Ram

Feel free to ask any questions or post your own experience with MWO and home streaming.

Edited by orcrist86, 14 June 2014 - 11:30 AM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

My wife just saw this set up and said:

"Well you arent as bad about gaming as I thought you were," and laughed.

Thank you for this epic display of technical acumen. I will be safe in my mancave for many moons due to this lol!

[orcrist86]

The primary motivation for this is wanting to be able to play with my 1 year old son in the room. The living room is child proofed, but the office is a dangerous mess of books and things that can fall.

[Lukoi Banacek]

That's awesome Orcrist. Good hunting with the youngin!

[orcrist86]

When he is old enough I'll break out the tabletop game.

[Alymbic]

I did this the same day it came out, but I use the -flowthru command instead of nopatch. Tv is fun, but I had a good laugh streaming it to my surface pro 2. Seeing a tablet running MWO at 60 fps on ultra is hilarious.

[Vernon Jettlund]

I was hoping for exactly this, thank you.

[orcrist86]

I have updated the command line arguments. This will launch the game in full screen. I'm still encountering issues with steam failing to launch the game, requiring you to manually launch it on the primary PC, but this eases the transition. I normally have process killer running so I may need to kill that. will let you all know.

[Nryrony]

Exactly what I was looking for, however still having trouble getting it to work.

The client starts, command line arguments seem to work, but when I try to login the connection fails. This only apply s if I launch the game through steam.

Anyone got a clue?

[orcrist86]

Sounds like a connection or focus fail. It could be from an internal resolution change. Try removing the full screen flag. Also check how your steaming is setup. My laptop is wireless but I plug it into my router directly. The Base PC is connected via wire line. Band width could be an issue if you get interference.

[halo62]

I hate to open up this thread since it's been awhile but I was having the same issue that Nryony was having. It's only when it gets launched through steam. Have you had any issues Orcrist86? It's frustrating because it's pretty much the only game I can't stream and every other game streams fine in my steam library.

[Flapdrol]

The game folder has to be outside of program files (otherwise mwo needs admin rights to save settings, screenshots and such, because that happens in the game folder).

Copy the game folder somewhere and start it from there, that works for me.

[Reno Blade]

I switched my HDMI (or was it DVI?) from my 3rd monitor to my 46" TV and played a bit with it as the Main screen for the game (only playing on one screen).
And I switched the TV to clone to see the difference and Lag while playing on my usual 23"W screen. It's noticeable, but not a problem.
But I don't have enough cable for my keyboard or mouse to play on my table and sitting on the desk while looking at the TV to my left is kinda unconfortable

But if I would do any living-room live gaming event, the Clone-to-TV setting would be the easiest, if still sitting on the desk.

[halo62]

Thanks Flapdrol. Moving it to a different drive is what worked for me. Now I can play from anywhere on my laptop.

[The Bionic Platypus]

Thank you!

I just got this working smoothly on an ancient Gateway laptop running Lubuntu Linux.

I can now annoy the wife with my mech addictions from anywhere in the house.

[Bill Lumbar]

orcrist86, on 07 June 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:

The primary motivation for this is wanting to be able to play with my 1 year old son in the room. The living room is child proofed, but the office is a dangerous mess of books and things that can fall.

Thank you orcrist86 for bringing this info forth and in such a well put together way. This is what I have hoped for with Steam, Linux to bridge the gap and get rid of my dependency on Microsoft products. I have look forward to this day for the last 9 years at least. I have steamed playing several games, MWO isn't on of them I have yet. I have 4 rigs set up on Linux Mint right now, and I run XBMC for my movies and through the 3 big screens that have there own rig. Streaming games on them from one main gaming rig is so Ideal and I love it.

Hopefully Steam OS will been seen as a major offering for an OS and even if it isn't you can still just stream off with Windows OS through your Steam account. Thanks for taking the time to get the info out there to others that haven't heard.

[ilikerice]

Reno Blade, on 12 November 2014 - 03:08 PM, said:

I switched my HDMI (or was it DVI?) from my 3rd monitor to my 46" TV and played a bit with it as the Main screen for the game (only playing on one screen).
And I switched the TV to clone to see the difference and Lag while playing on my usual 23"W screen. It's noticeable, but not a problem.
But I don't have enough cable for my keyboard or mouse to play on my table and sitting on the desk while looking at the TV to my left is kinda unconfortable

But if I would do any living-room live gaming event, the Clone-to-TV setting would be the easiest, if still sitting on the desk.

Reno, if it is a direct connection you shouldn't be having anymore lag than on your normal monitor. Video lag issues would usually come from running into a home theater setup rather than directly into the TV. Normal this is done to strip audio off of an HDMI cable but if you run video directly to the display and audio to your sound system this shouldn't be a problem.

I run MWO out of my PC across an extender to my garage on my projector, and there isn't a huge difference in the video delay. Sniping isn't too bad but using lasers is sometimes a problem, but is that really my video lag or just hitreg? Either way, playing with big stompy robots with surround sound on a massive screen is MUCH more enjoyable, even if I end up playing a little worse.