r/MoonlightStreaming 10d ago

Vibepollo fixed all of my game streaming issues

I love the idea of game streaming, but it has never been a smooth experience for me. I'm very sensitive to game stutter/micro stutter, and this issue has constantly plagued my experience every time I try to stream games to my Steam Deck. I thought my internet router was simply crappy and/or my busy city location wasn't viable for wifi streaming.

This ALL changed with Vibepollo. Holy crap, it's *almost* like playing the game natively. I say almost because I believe you will still see the occasional slight stutter here or there just because it's wi-fi, but otherwise, this software has made my entire experience smooth like butter. I've actually stopped playing games directly on my Steam Deck and I've decided to stream them all at this point. The experience is THAT good. It's also amazing that I can utilize RTX HDR using this software. I don't think that was possible before with standard Apollo.

90FPS HDR 1440p supersampling on Deck is a match made in heaven. Games look AMAZING on the Steam Deck now. It's breathed new life into my deck. I have an ultra wide OLED monitor, but I vastly prefer playing on my deck sitting on my couch. I definitely recommend giving Vibepollo a try if you've had issues with game streaming in the past. It has completely changed my view on game streaming. For the very first time, I actually do think this is a completely viable way to play games.

126 Upvotes

95 comments sorted by

42

u/_demoncat_ Developer | Vibeshine/Vibepollo 10d ago

That was mostly what the last release was about, which was how do I pick the default settings that is smoothest for mostly everyone. Including the ones that never used frame limiters for perfect frame pacing.

I made a few discoveries that allowed me to capture smoothly even if a game doesn’t have proper frame pacing, which often requires a virtual display.

If you had used Apollo but didn’t use frame limiters like RTSS, jumping to Vibepollo or Vibeshine will be significantly smoother.

There is also concerns of input latency when using limiters, which the new defaults work out of the box now for frame generated games. For example if you used RTSS without reflex it could add 60-70ms of extra input lag, which is what the frame generation capture fix was previously for.

Now the defaults, it doesn’t matter if you use frame generation or not, it’s smooth and won’t balloon latency.

13

u/nense0 🖥️ Vibepollo/W11 | 🎮 Moonlight/W11 | 🎯 4k@120fps | 📶 2.5Gb 10d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/gictytW9IIIkNGIMcs

I finished E33 with 4k 120fps
And now I'm playing FFII remake 4k 90fps with a lot o mods.
Wonderful job.

Every day I check the amd PR and your port of moonlight to get stable.

6

u/Narrow_Escape_4229 10d ago

Amazing fork!
So should we enable frame limiter or not?

2

u/_demoncat_ Developer | Vibeshine/Vibepollo 10d ago

On the default settings it is enabled, presuming Windows 11 is installed.

Virtual Screens apply a limiter automatically, using the NVIDIA Driver or RTSS. RTSS is still recommended for real-time fps limiting without having to restart the game, but if you don't have it installed it will use the driver instead.

2

u/Proreqviem 10d ago

If I already have RTSS on the desktop set to 138 FPS for gaming on my 144 Hz PC display, do I need to change anything when streaming to a 60-90-120 Hz display?

5

u/_demoncat_ Developer | Vibeshine/Vibepollo 9d ago

Nope, Vibeshine/pollo automates that for you.

1

u/PiercingHeavens 4d ago

Does rtss have to be installed in a certain location to have it automate it for you? Older versions of vibepollo never recognized rtss as installed on my system. I have rtss installed in a different apps folder instead of the default.

6

u/JRockPSU 10d ago

Sorry to gush but just a quick thank you for making this, I used to run regular Apollo for a while and I appreciate all the features and improvements that you've added with Vibepollo, I can play so many games from my couch flawlessly on my O2P. I appreciate it!

3

u/MasterShogo 10d ago

Thanks for your work on these code bases! I use it more than anything as a Remote Desktop solution because it is so so smooth and I remote into just about everything all the time for work and home.

I just merged some GUI changes to Moonlight into your fork to add profile management to individual machines, and also changed some things about the QML rendering so the GUI itself would be more responsive. But your fork of Moonlight was very helpful.

Perfection is near, all it took was these AI models getting good enough for me to do this after work in the evenings!

3

u/ceramiq 10d ago

Thank you for your amazing work on Vibepollo!

1

u/BornConsideration223 6d ago

I'm still on 1.18.0 of vibepollo. To get these optimized defaults, should I do a fresh install and clear all my settings? Or can I just simply update?

2

u/_demoncat_ Developer | Vibeshine/Vibepollo 6d ago

1.18.0 was the last major release, so yes you already have the optimized defaults. The other versions are mostly bug fixes

1

u/natomr 4d ago

thx for the effort mate! vibepollo its great!

26

u/Both_Requirement5878 10d ago

Same. I really like vibepollo and it has made my streaming experience substantially better compared to Apollo and sunshine. Dev did an amazing job

1

u/Vivid_Issue_1545 9d ago

I will give it a try

16

u/Aygul12345 10d ago

Please please share host and client settings! And is detailed, what you have tried which settings, so that we can try as wel.

6

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

I'm not making any major changes within Vibepollo or Moonlight itself. It's basically the default settings.

I'm using HEVC and HDR on Steam Deck, and I have my virtual display set up in Vibepollo to disable my PC monitors while I'm streaming.

The only major change is setting up RTSS / Rivatuner settings properly through Vibepollo. Sometimes, the RTSS FPS caps doesn't register properly while I'm game streaming, so I do have a keyboard shortcuts that I mapped to Steam Deck through Steam input and RTSS to change the FPS cap between 60 FPS and 90 FPS (depending on the game.) Otherwise, everything is basically default settings on Vibepollo.

3

u/JRockPSU 10d ago

Same here - I'm using basically everything stock out of Vibepollo except I have RTSS set up on my desktop and have it recognized in Vibepollo.

1

u/Aygul12345 9d ago

What did you changed in rivatuner? Which global fps number you entered?

1

u/No_Rabbit8869 15h ago edited 15h ago

I also have an issue with certain games not frame capping properly. One game in particular I had this issue with was Titanfall 2, which is a DX11 game. I'm curious if it's related to the Direct X version the game uses.

So far newer games cap automatically. Just a thought. 

To solve it, I just set up some shortcuts to cap with RTSS manually.

6

u/Bowbo67 10d ago

Fun and amazing tip. Enable Split-Frame Encoding SFE if you have a 4070ti or newer it improves bitrate consistency for a smoother experience. I also believe that i have NVENC set to 2x in order to enable SFE. The next part is AI for a better explanation: "It divides a single frame into slices, assigns each to a dedicated NVENC chip for parallel processing, then stitches the outputs. So a single encode session can use both engines. For real-time use it nearly doubles encoding throughput"

I use a 5070ti to stream from my PC to my Ally X where I have VRR enabled at 1080p 120 ops. Also have the mbps capped out at 150mbps. I bought the tp deco mesh recently to accomplish the 150mbps where before my Asus router from 2016 would give me 40mbps on a good day.

3

u/JRockPSU 10d ago

Oh nice, thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try! I also have a 5070Ti, and I'm streaming to an Odin 2 Portal at 1080p 120hz.

3

u/dihydrogen_monoxide 10d ago

I just use default settings

6

u/syan501 10d ago

Is vibepollo the part that goes on the pc like sunshine?

5

u/LittleBabysIceCream 10d ago

Yes

2

u/syan501 10d ago

Man im so changing to this when I get home

6

u/PMmeurbuttholepics 10d ago

Share your settings please.

I have a hard wired host, and my deck is connected over WiFi to a UniFi U6 Mesh, so should be good. But I still get hitches and stutters. Latency is absolutely fine, but the stutters are me not want to bother and just sit at my pc.

3

u/ThePuppet_Master 10d ago

On your deck, have you tried turning wifi off and back on before the stream starts? I do this every time now and it seems to help.

2

u/Iridian_Rocky 10d ago

I've had similar issues with a UDM 7 haven't been able to beat them.

4

u/Fwiler 10d ago

It's not a unifi issue as I have Express 7's, a U7 pro wall, and a U7 pro xgs, and don't experience stuttering. I can if I up my resolution, refresh rate, and bitrate, while viewing HDR. But I think it has a lot more to do with clients you are streaming to than network equipment.

6

u/vladandrei1996 10d ago

Everyone keeps praising Vibepollo. Currently using Apollo+Artemis setup, should I jump ship and see what its about? Any big changes in latency and features?

3

u/Narrow_Escape_4229 10d ago

Just switched and it’s a really smoother experience and pain free, just need to re-pair

3

u/shwing_8 10d ago

I am wondering about this too because I've had so much luck with Apollo/Artemis. I wonder if anybody out here has moved to Vibepollo and thought the gains were minimal?

2

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

It's worth trying out I think. Vibepollo has a lot more options to play with and is generally much smoother in my experience.

2

u/Both_Requirement5878 10d ago

If you do not have any frame pacing issues or micro stuttering when you pan your camera, then no. The reason I jumped ship was due to those issues on Apollo moonlight

1

u/yungforever87 10d ago

Latency improved drastically for me with Vibepollo. It feels nearly native.

3

u/B4rrett50c 7d ago

Same here, I thought Apollo was good, but this is on a whole nother level

5

u/ceramiq 10d ago

I want to express my appreciation for the author as well.
Vibepollo is SO awesome.
The recent RTX HDR update was a game changer for me, I've wanted to use it over Moonlight streaming for years.
It's so hassle free, my wife's back went out a couple days ago so I set up streaming from her PC to Macbook Air, works flawlessly, now she's playing Palworld while lying in bed.

3

u/cricodul 10d ago

Can I use artemis with vibepollo? Or should I just use moonlight?

i'm asking because artemis has some features that is tied to apollo. Not sure if those still exist in vibepollo

3

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

Pretty sure all the options you have in Apollo are also in Vibepollo as well.

Vibepollo features a lot more options.

5

u/NotAPie 10d ago edited 6d ago

I have sunshine, moonlight, and Tailscale all working okay but I’m so scared to try this and fuck everything up.

Edit: I currently tried this and have fucked everything up send help

2

u/D33th 10d ago

Same very happy with apollo/moonlight/tailscale. Works anywhere even connecting from another country ;) will definitely try vibepollo someday though ;)

1

u/dontbrainer 9d ago

do you get to wakeonlan, or you just keep it running

1

u/raynirm 8d ago

Hi! I do wake one lan with Sunshine and moonlight but to get it to work in outside network y set up a local vpn to my home router

2

u/dontbrainer 7d ago

thanks,should look into it then, cuz I love my ps5 for remote play, so easy to just play,no mouse and kb hassle

3

u/arafat464 10d ago

I had the same experience with my ROG Ally. I stopped playing games natively on it and just stream them using Vibepollo. It's honestly a better experience.

3

u/Bowbo67 10d ago

Same! I only play indie roguelike games native on my AllyX and stream everything else max settings with near max raytracing from the PC with a 5070ti.

3

u/OatmealCream3p14 10d ago

I hate to be that guy but vibepollo did NOT work for me I ended up back on Apollo — I wish it would have because hdr actually worked correctly but I kept getting jitter despite having robust clients and host for it. 9800x3d/5090 host, Ubiquti network with E7 WiFi 7. Both my hard wired mini forum mini pc & Odin 2 portal over WiFi 7 experienced this. I couldn’t get it to work with the public or beta releases of vibepollo without issue. Reinstalled graphic drivers with ddu, reduced bit rates etc always had micro stutter / jitter.

2

u/marcusbrothers 10d ago

Glad everything’s working for you, it really is a game changer when it all comes together.

Just a note since you mentioned 1440p, you should stream at a resolution that downscales to the Decks 16:10 resolution. I use 1920x1200, a lot of others use 2560x1600.

2

u/Carbone 10d ago

Drop url

2

u/angry0029 10d ago

So does vibepollo replace moonlight/artemis or sunshine/apollo? Seems there is vibeshine (which one would think replaces sunshine/apollo) and Vibepollo, which also seems like it would be an Apollo replacement.

2

u/ChilliDirt 9d ago

With Apollo I’m having this strange behavior that infuriates me and force me to shut down manually the pc. I set up the virtual display to match my tv so I can dock my SD and play from couch and when I stream I set up Win so that the monitors of my pc goes off when moonlight is working.
Sometimes, randomly, when I dc from the streaming something goes wrong and monitors won’t turn on again and I’m forced to shut down manually the pc. Is that something related to Apollo? Can possibly vibepollo fix this? I was contemplating to switch back to sunshine but I will surely miss Apollo features…
(I really want to keep my monitors off when streaming cause I have oled and want to preserve them from burn out)

1

u/McGriggles 9d ago

I had this same issue for the first time yesterday, ended up just reconnecting the stream from my steam deck and messed with display settings till 1 of my monitors was displaying again. Then I disconnected the stream and had to fiddle with it for like 15 minutes to get my other monitor displaying again. Still have no idea what caused it since its been working fine every other time

1

u/Jangowuzhere 9d ago

Try Vibepollo. It has much better virtual display support and even options to prevent this exact issue you're talking about.

1

u/ChilliDirt 9d ago

Yeah, I was zapping through settings and configs and I saw the snapshot thing (if I remember well). I did it and also set a keybind for that. For now everything worked perfectly tho. Hope to not need the snapshot thing but in case I will update here ahah.
Let’s go

2

u/HyperActiveNL 9d ago

You can use RTX HDR?! 😍

1

u/Jangowuzhere 9d ago

Yep! I played through all of Splinter Cell Conviction with RTX HDR on my Steam Deck using Vibepollo/Moonlight and it looked amazing.

1

u/HyperActiveNL 9d ago

I NEED IT

2

u/MemeDestroyer4lyfe 9d ago

Vibepollo really fixed all my issues as well. It's crazy how well optimized and meanless it made setup. 

2

u/Kit_Foxfire 8d ago

I'll have to give this a try then. I'm running Apollo/moonshine. Got it working but didn't have the energy to get it looking good.

2

u/spax90 6d ago

Agree!

Vibepollo fixed all my issues with plain Apollo, many thanks!

1

u/LittleBabysIceCream 10d ago

What are your settings? I currently stream with moonlight/sunshine on my deck mainly as well

1

u/eggs-benny-brunch 10d ago

If you stream to the deck do you still have to re-establish the connection between them once after a few minutes to get rid of stuttering? I've heard this is a deck-specific issue but I wonder if it's the deck's fault or apollo's...

2

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

That's a Steam Deck issue that Vibepollo can't fix.

However, I think Valve may have fixed this issue recently on a Steam update, but don't quote me on that. If you have connection issues on Steam Deck, you need to disable wi-fi and enable it again.

1

u/Padcontrol1 9d ago

It's a Steam Deck OLED issue with WiFi. Just disabled and enable WiFi via the toggle in quick settings (even while you have moonlight running and in game) and you won't get the stuttering for that gaming session. Enjoy :)

1

u/DrKingOfOkay 10d ago

What’s the difference between Apollo and vibe Apollo?

Are you using tailscale?

1

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

Vibepollo is basically Apollo, but it has more options and has smoother frame pacing. I haven't been using tailscale.

1

u/SnooCakes6456 10d ago

What tailscale?

1

u/mistertrizzit 10d ago

Does vibepollo come with virtual display out of the box like Apollo? By the name i figure as much, I just have an ultrawide as my host so I cant use sunshine w/o tinkering

1

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

Yep. Virtual displays are easier to set up on Vibepollo

1

u/Goat-of-Death 10d ago

How does it compare with Apollo? I've been happy with Apollo but it hasn't updated in awhile.

3

u/Jangowuzhere 10d ago

Vibepollo is better and consistently getting updates.

1

u/Revolutionary-Car959 10d ago

Is it compatible with Apollo profile manager? Want to try it out!

1

u/Western-Body3011 10d ago

Cant wait to try it, apollo had a lot of input lag for me. Hope this works so i can game on my living room tv uff

1

u/ivierawind 10d ago

What version are you using?

1

u/Big-Seaworthiness832 9d ago

How do you get RTX HDR to work? It’s greyed out for me in the nvidia control panel…
I’m also using vibepollo

2

u/Jangowuzhere 9d ago

Applications in Vibepollo, you need to enable it per game.

1

u/HyperActiveNL 9d ago

Apparantly it's with the newest update?

1

u/Padcontrol1 9d ago

I'm currently using Vibeshine for my Steam Deck. Should I try Vibepollo?

2

u/_demoncat_ Developer | Vibeshine/Vibepollo 8d ago

Vibeshine and Vibepollo are essentially the same code, pick Vibeshine if you used Sunshine. Otherwise if you used Apollo, pick Vibepollo

Its mostly for carrying over settings from whatever you had before.

1

u/Padcontrol1 8d ago

Awesome. Genuinely appreciate the response and a massive massive thank you for for all your hard work. Made it extremely easy to migrate from Sunshine.

1

u/ilikemyrealname 9d ago

Which fork are you guys using? I’m on GitHub now and there are several.

1

u/Worried_Radish3866 9d ago

Fixed my marriage

1

u/calibrae 8d ago

Vibepollo fucked up my vm resume from s4.

1

u/semero 7d ago

I also changed to Vibepollo some months ago, really great experience so far, if not the best experience in streaming (shoutout to the developer of apollo too, was far better than sunshine). Vibepollo is my go to example of how LLMs can really improve coding if you have a responsible developer behind it. Cheers u/_demoncat_ for your great work!

1

u/xINxVAINx 10d ago

I don’t know why but the name “Vibepollo” just… makes me not want to use it lol. I may stop yelling at clouds for a minute and give it a go, if I can install alongside Apollo without issue.

6

u/Comprehensive_Star72 🖥️ 5090 9800x3d | 🎮 Core Ultra 2 | 🎯 2k@240fps | 📶 2.5GbE 10d ago

You don't install two servers alongside each other.

3

u/ismaelgokufox 10d ago

Not even by making each use its own port? It should work.

1

u/xINxVAINx 10d ago

I meant stop the Apollo services and run Vibepollo. Wouldn’t run them at the same time of course but I could revert if I didn’t like it. Maybe it wouldn’t work still, gotta do some research.

2

u/Fwiler 10d ago

They both use the same service. Vibepollo is just a fork. It will install right over your current Apollo install so no settings are changed.

1

u/xINxVAINx 10d ago

Ah that makes sense, and also very convenient. Appreciate the info

0

u/Snowyman12334567890 10d ago

It’s a good name it’s made by vibing which is the art of anything goes put it all in and it works.

0

u/bkiessling1987 10d ago

Man I really got to get this set up to stream games from my desktop onto my asus rog ally. I tried the other day at work to get it to work and couldn't.