I have put Nvidia shield TVs on all of the TVs as the one-box solution. So far only used as sagetv clients and typical streaming, but now that everything is stable I want to look into using it for gaming.  This would be for kids, not hardcore anything and they won't particularly care about graphics/performance as long as it works. I would like for them to be able to play games on multiple sources, including the shield TVs and laptops (xbox one and/or switch nice too but not necessary, havent even researched), but getting confused on how it all works together.

 

If my goal is to be able to game from the "cloud" (meaning I can install once and they can play from several places, whether its local cloud or internet cloud), does SteamOS help me?  Asking because I see some of the games on the shield TVs come from steam, some from nvidia, etc.  Is the local SteamOS install redundant if all these can be played on the shields directly?

 

 

bump? anyone?

Hey btrcp,

 

This post is probably in the wrong section (unless you intended to host all of your streaming servers) but the things that probably come closest to what you are trying to do would be something like Xbox Game Pass (allows you to play games on xbox and windows netflix style) or something like Nvidia's Geforce Now when it comes out of Beta.

 

They are basically hosting a VM that can play games and you install your games on it and then can play on any system that can run the geforce now client.  Shield, MacOS, Windows.  It's currently in beta and it's free if you can get in but eventually it's going to revert to an hourly pricing structure.

 

If you are thinking about hosting your own servers via unraid you're going to need 1 VM per active user and a client for them to play on.  Each VM will need a copy of the software they are trying to play if they all want to play it at the same time.  Steam does have some sort of loaning program though so you might be able to mitigate this.

 

As far as steamos, its currently just a client but they are working on making it able to host a stream as well.  What it would do for you would be that once it can host a steam stream you would be able to use the steam link app on the nividia shield to stream the game and would not need a windows license per VM.

 

Thanks for responding.  After playing with it for a few weeks, I think I have answered my own question. I posted it in the VM section because I had seen SteamOS as a choice in the Unraid "create a new vm" section, and i was originally under the impression that I would need to run one to stream games to the Shields (was never thinking about hosting from the Shields).

 

I have since concluded that the Shields have everything I would need to stream from the Steam online cloud, Geforce Now, etc. Seems like SteamOS is only really helpful if you already have a sizeable library of PC/Linux games and a standalone gaming PC that you want to stream from. Neither applies to me.

 

Let me know if I am incorrect about any of the above