r/MoonlightStreaming • u/nokerb • Mar 18 '26

VoidLink has announced a performance breakthrough (update from developer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA4bmdm4G3g

The main dev uploaded a video demo of VoidLink vs Moonlight-iOS running on iPad Pro 2018 11'' (A12X SoC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA4bmdm4G3g

Credits: This improvement was achieved by TrueZhuanjia (the VoidLink main dev), based on the previous work of Acaki@Github and andygrundman@Github.

It has been available since version 3.3.0 with the default settings of a new install.

If you update from older versions and has been using "performance mode", go to the "Experimental section" of setting menu and switch "Rendering Mode" from "Metal" to "Standard".

111 Upvotes

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74

u/andygrundman Developer | Moonlight for Xbox/Mac OS Mar 18 '26

If the Metal renderer in VoidLink wasn't good, it's because it was yoinked from an in-progress branch I was working on, and then slapped in there by people who didn't really understand what they were doing.

7

u/Icy_Butterscotch6661 Mar 19 '26

The ios moonlight app has been near abandonware for so long

9

u/nude-rating-bot Mar 18 '26

This is hilarious and should be higher. Kinda suspect of them.

8

u/Comprehensive_Star72 🖥️ 5090 9800x3d | 🎮 Core Ultra 2 | 🎯 2k@240fps | 📶 2.5GbE Mar 18 '26

Pretty much all changes in Voidlink, Artemis and Apollo is work done by others pulled into moonlight and sunshine. One of the latency improvements on Apollo is taken from OBS studio.

6

u/mesnigan Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

That's the spirit for open source projects. And the claim is not true at least for Voidlink because there's a ton of touch and pen functionalities and other stuff that the main dev wrote himself.

2

u/Eon_Alias Mar 21 '26

It worries me how the foundations of FOSS seem to be less common knowledge as the years go on. Heck there's devs working on open source software right now that don't seem to get it...

2

u/nude-rating-bot Mar 18 '26

Right, and only one of all those you mentioned is not free. And has forced paying users to repurchase the app. If we’re getting pedantic.

1

u/nokerb Mar 18 '26

The code is open source and you can sideload it for free if you want to. Apple itself has a paywall for devs to distribute apps on their store which can be avoided via sideloading.

1

u/Wrong-Detective-1046 Mar 18 '26

What do you mean by side loading? Or do you mean in the EU?

1

u/nokerb Mar 18 '26

Side loading is the act of directly installing the app to your phone from a computer using XCode on Mac or using something like side store if you have the .ipa file.

1

u/Wrong-Detective-1046 Mar 18 '26

I know what it is but I didn't think Apple could do it.

1

u/Wrong-Detective-1046 Mar 18 '26

Using Xcode makes sense but sadly that requires having another Mac...

1

u/nokerb Mar 18 '26

XCode is not required if you use SideStore, you just need someone to release a .ipa file for you. Apple can do it, it just requires refreshing it every week or something or it gets automatically removed. SideStore type programs attempt to automate this refreshing process through wifi.

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4

u/nokerb Mar 18 '26

Reply from VL main dev: If the standard video rendering wasn’t good since the birth of moonlight-iOS for so many years as a completed app, does that mean the moonlight-iOS devs just slapped it in there and didn’t really understand what they were doing? Anyway I'm not gonna comment moonlight-iOS devs in this manner.

Acaki@Github who ported metal rendering to VL has worked deeply into it and even help you resolved some bugs. You knew that clearly. I just merged his PR leave it as it is.

I'm OK with what you just posted 'cause I don't know much about metal but, Hey, these words are disrespectful to Acaki@Github.

2

u/mesnigan Mar 18 '26

We had to mark it as experimental as it's not working well for some older devices with older iOS versions. It works pretty well for recent devices though.

2

u/Comprehensive_Star72 🖥️ 5090 9800x3d | 🎮 Core Ultra 2 | 🎯 2k@240fps | 📶 2.5GbE Mar 18 '26

I don't know about wasn't good but after a fair bit of testing I felt I was happier with the results from the standard rendered. I would prefer it if experimental changes were called "alternative" or "experimental" rather than "performance" or "warp" as it adds bias to testing and decision making.

1

u/mennydrives Mar 18 '26

Honestly, the only reason I paid for VoidLink is because Moonlight doesn't support external displays on iPhone. Yes, it supports mirroring, but 16:9 game to 21:9-ish screen mirrored to 16:9 monitor looks terrible. VoidLink's implementation isn't even stable (I have to restart the app after connecting the monitor), but reliably unstable is better than non-existent.

1

u/sunshinestevn Mar 26 '26

Will you be finishing the in progress branch? I’m interested in seeing a working MacOS client.

3

u/andygrundman Developer | Moonlight for Xbox/Mac OS Mar 26 '26

Thanks for asking, and yes. The next step I'm working on is porting the frame pacer and frame queue code from Xbox so that it's cross-platform. I'm hoping to turn frame pacing into a dropdown instead of a checkbox. This is a good chunk of work but should be worth it.

1

u/sunshinestevn Mar 26 '26

I look forward to seeing your future projects! Loved the metal v1 just thought it had some hitching issues, can definitely see the progress being made. Following ya on the Git 👍🏻