![]() I couldn't get in "the groove." It was playable, but the entire time I just wanted to stare back up at my PC monitor instead for a smoother experience. I tried out Grid - not officially supported by Shield but still totally functional - and while the responsiveness of controls was entirely adequate, the frame rate (around 25-30FPS) made me really struggle with the game at times. And when they're less than ideal, your performance will be less than ideal, too. Any time something really frantic starts happening in a game, or you're playing a game that requires constant variable input, frame rates matter. At that speed, though, some games become difficult to play well on Shield. Since it's just a streamed video, the frame rate really doesn't fluctuate too much, it's pretty consistent in what feels like that 30-45 FPS range depending on the game. I can't imagine it could get much better, either - my setup is a GeForce GTX 760, Intel i7 3770K processor, and an ASUS RT-N66U dual-band N router with Shield connected on the 5GHz band. ![]() As any PC gamer will tell you, a frame rate below 60 FPS is playable, but anything under that magic number will materially impact the gameplay experience. 720p at 30-45 FPS is probably good enough for most mobile games. Here's the thing about video streamed to Shield - it seems to have a capped frame rate. Both worked fine with out-of-the-box configurations. And given I don't have half a dozen PC and network configurations to test, I cannot say with complete and utter confidence that it will work 100% of the time every time on every configuration. Now, of course, this is assuming all five of these steps go smoothly. ![]() Go to PC Games Beta.įind your computer, accept the connect request on your PC, and start playing. Let me show you just how trivial.ĭownload the latest NVIDIA beta drivers with GeForce Experience.Ĭonnect your Shield and PC to the same network. You need a Shield (duh), a Wi-Fi router, and a desktop computer with a GTX 650 or higher NVIDIA graphics card. The equipment is the biggest setup hurdle. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty CityĪnd here's a quick video hands-on going over how the streaming works, with a quick demo of Bioshock: Infinite. While I do genuinely applaud NVIDIA's technical achievement with Shield game streaming, as a gamer, there are bones I still have to pick with the whole experience.Īs a helpful starting point, here are the games Shield currently officially supports (though it will launch just about any game you want using Steam's Big Picture mode): There's a difference between a product that works and a product that works in a way that makes you want to use it. This is an ambitious sort of product - a kind of product NVIDIA isn't exactly known for - and it's still a beta.īut. I expected bugs, problems, major compatibility issues, and overall levels of jankiness to be significantly higher. That's kind of incredible.įrankly, I expected it to be worse than this. ![]() This is all happening with almost no latency, and it's a pretty seamless experience - no weird dongles, no cables, no absurdly complicated software to set up and configure. Meanwhile, the Shield is sending control inputs back through that network to the PC. I mean, take a step back and think about what's happening here: your computer is rendering a game (whose graphics settings, ideally, are pre-configured by GeForce Experience for optimal performance and quality), and then compressing that game - live - into streaming 720p H.264 video pushed through your local network wirelessly to the Shield handheld. And the conditions are pretty near-ideal. This is basically NVIDIA's "look at what we can do" technology - it's what happens when they can have a high degree of control over the gaming experience. ![]() While it is remarkably similar to the Splashtop game streaming functionality NVIDIA demoed at CES 2012 (which never really came to fruition), Shield streaming feels like an even bigger step forward. When I first experienced the NVIDIA Shield's ability to stream games from a PC to the handheld unit wirelessly at CES back in January, I was floored. ![]()
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