What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

[sesselpupser]

So I got my Ouya, installed Kainy and I'm... Undecided. On the one hand, the quality is good and latency, while still apparent when connected via 200mbps powerline ethernet adaptors, is minimal (but really not suitable for timing-critical games). On the other hand, the controller is beyond bad; the D-pad has no feeling whatsoever, my left analogue stick squeaks, it uses AA batteries which will get expensive, it doesn't have a USB option for when the batteries do die and, yeah, it is far from ideal.

Worse than that, though? Kainy - this PC game streaming app - maps the Ouya pad as keyboard and mouse inputs, so the PC thinks you're just using your keyboard and mouse. That is completely counter-intuitive, though I suppose was done to maximise compatibility, but if you want to play a keyboard and mouse game... Just sit at your desk! You can't possibly use a controller to play a game that wasn't designed for controllers; I'd rather not play than try to play Arma 3, for instance, with any controller.

So yeah, for the Ouya and Kainy to be a useful solution to my problem, I need my PC to see Kainy's inputs as Xinput, or Directinput at the very least. Failing that, I need some sort of USB extender that works over ethernet so I can have a wired controller or a Bluetooth radio plugged in alongside the Ouya, thereby giving me hardware controller support rather than software. Right now I'm trying the software route as it's completely free (and those USB things are hard to find) and I've mapped the controller to nearly completely Directinput - there is no RX or RY axis in vJoy, which I need, and there's no start or select button on the Ouya pad - and the next step is to try X360CE to see if I can get that virtual Dinput controller seen as a virtual Xinput controller. To call it a hacky solution would be charitable, and even if I do get this working, I still don't have start or select.

With any luck, the developer will add support for a PS3 pad and make the PC see it as a PS3 pad off the bat, then I'd just need to do whatever it is people do to get the PS3 pad seen as a 360 pad... But even then I won't be able to start Big Picture mode because the PS button would operate Kainy's menu and would presumably not be sent over the network as a result.

TL, DR: if you want to stream PC games to another TV in your house, either wait for Kainy to improve or wait for SteamOS to allow it. The Ouya will always be the cheapest option though, unless you have a spare PC or if someone makes something for the Raspberry Pi...


Edit: It works! It was hacky and long-winded but I can now play Just Cause 2 remotely using the Ouya pad. Ok, there's still no pause/back/guide button and there's no fine control because the analogue axes are converted to digital, but I'm investigating the use of a Raspberry Pi as a USB over LAN server so that I might be able to use my wired X360 pad remotely which would be a preferable solution.

Edit: So as it turns out, this is all completely pointless thanks to VirtualHere. I installed the server on my otherwise unused Raspberry Pi and the client on my PC, both super-quick installs and within 10 minutes I had my 360 controller recognised and fully functional on my PC. That means native Xinput, all analogue axes intact, vibration, pause, back and the guide button. Oh, and it was free, sort of (I already had the Pi). Very nice! Looks like the Ouya is a viable option for streaming after all.

 

[phillgt2002]

Just erased 11GB of things to make space for more things

 

[Lain]

The majority of my computer parts arrived today. The only things I'm still waiting on is the 2nd 780 Ti, the HDD, the Blu-ray drive, and the case. And of lesser importance, the mouse and monitor.

But even so... I couldn't resist putting together what did come in today. Updated the bios, installed the CPU (i7-4930K) and fan, 64 GB of RAM and the first 780 Ti and unleashed all that powah...


On the bios.

 

[Korza]

The majority of my computer parts arrived today. The only things I'm still waiting on is the 2nd 780 Ti, the HDD, the Blu-ray drive, and the case. And of lesser importance, the mouse and monitor.

But even so... I couldn't resist putting together what did come in today. Updated the bios, installed the CPU (i7-4930K) and fan, 64 GB of RAM and the first 780 Ti and unleashed all that powah...


On the bios.

I'm currently doing the same with my new FX-8350 while I try and find my Windows 7 disk so I can do a fresh install.

 

[Lain]

Due to not yet receiving my hard drive or optical drive for my PC, I wiped my non-Retina MBP's hard drive and installed Windows 8.1 using its optical drive, then removed the hard drive and plugged that bitch up to my PC.

What I was able to do was pretty limited thanks to not having an optical drive, an internet connection or being able to activate Windows. But I did install the latest drivers for my GPU and then gave PCSX2 a whack... got around 500 FPS on the PS2 menu and around 110 FPS in Shadow of the Colossus running at 1280x1024. Not too shabby.

 

[sesselpupser]

Due to not yet receiving my hard drive or optical drive for my PC, I wiped my non-Retina MBP's hard drive and installed Windows 8.1 using its optical drive, then removed the hard drive and plugged that bitch up to my PC.

What I was able to do was pretty limited thanks to not having an optical drive, an internet connection or being able to activate Windows. But I did install the latest drivers for my GPU and then gave PCSX2 a whack... got around 500 FPS on the PS2 menu and around 110 FPS in Shadow of the Colossus running at 1280x1024. Not too shabby.

What kind of processor do you have to get frame rates like that? I get pretty bad rates when using a software renderer (which is more compatible) so all the sound slows down and everything. My squadron friends in Ace Combat Zero sound drunk all the time. Oh and that's with an i5 2500K and a GTX 680. Using a hardware renderer the frame rate is fine but some games don't like it at all; Ace Combat Zero's terrain textures go all corrupt but at least the guys watching my back are sober.

Edit: my god I'm blind, but that's one hell of a CPU you're running.

 

[Casio]

Put a backplate on my card so it looks like teh sex.

Going to finish the heatshink on the PCI-E power next...(Lift your game Seasonic!)

 

[MHPALA]

Due to not yet receiving my hard drive or optical drive for my PC, I wiped my non-Retina MBP's hard drive and installed Windows 8.1 using its optical drive, then removed the hard drive and plugged that bitch up to my PC.

What I was able to do was pretty limited thanks to not having an optical drive, an internet connection or being able to activate Windows. But I did install the latest drivers for my GPU and then gave PCSX2 a whack... got around 500 FPS on the PS2 menu and around 110 FPS in Shadow of the Colossus running at 1280x1024. Not too shabby.

Run some synthetic benchmarks already. Just obliterate the 3DMark11 thread.

 

[Lain]

Screw synthetics.

Besides, I'm still waiting on my second 780 Ti...

Anyway... optimized some PCSX2, hooked my PC up to a 1080p display and here's what I got:

Gran Turismo 4 - 125 FPS (in-race, of course)
Enthusia - 140 FPS
Final Fantasy XII, SotC - 150 FPS
Front Mission 5 - 215 FPS
Okami - 220 FPS
Dragon Quest VIII - 225 FPS
Silent Hill 2 - 250 FPS
Persona 3 FES - 290 FPS

 

[Shaun]

Ok not what I've done today but a question on sound cards and music as I thought it's not worth starting a thread over.

I have this motherboard and it's connected to a receiver running a 2.1 setup via optical cable.
So the question is would installing a sound card make any improvements at all? I assumed no as the receiver is just taking a digital signal and processing it anyway.
When listening through my headphones I also plug them into the receiver and not the PC, come to think of it I don't know if the headphone jack on my PC even works.

Is it worth a sound card then or not worth the effort, remember I'm talking music only.
Thanks.

 

[Korza]

Do you want the sound card for music or gaming? I would suggest that a sound card isn't necessary as you're using S/PDIF (optical).

 

[Shaun]

Um, music only is what I'm concerned about as it says in my post.
I do game on it occasionally also although that doesn't bother me too much.

 

[Korza]

Um, music only is what I'm concerned about as it says in my post.

Just double checking. 👍

If it's music you're only worried about, I'd get a USB DAC (digital-analouge converter) like this and run your headphones through that instead of getting a standalone sound card. The only downside is USB DACs don't support DSP like most sound cards do so sound quality in games isn't as good as it would be with a sound card but sound quality with music is greatly improved.

 

[Shaun]

So that will do a better job than the DAC in my receiver which I currently plug my headphones into?

Just want to be sure.

 

[Korza]

So that will do a better job than the DAC in my receiver which I currently plug my headphones into?

Just want to be sure.

I'd probably stick with running the headphones through the receiver, it'll do just a good a job as a standalone DAC would.

 

[Shaun]

@Korza OK thanks mate. 👍

 

[6ranTur15m05]

Played League of Legends until I got bored of it. Now I'm playing GT6.

 

[Dutchyfutch]

Cleaned the pcb of my graphics card since it was giving blue screens . Some weird goo was sitting on one of the capacitors idk something was being conductive
Until I took it off , I just moved out and never got that issue , now in this house it started doing that , glad it's gone :/

Oh btw it's not coil whining or a faulty capacitor

 

[sesselpupser]

Just a quick question;
I have this line of code (it's MikroC, which is basically just C as far as I know) in an example I'm looking at:

'if (portd_index > 3u)'​

What does that 'u' mean? Of course I get the 'if (portd_index > 3)' part but that 'u' must mean something and I don't know what. Any ideas please?

 

[BobK]

Unsigned integer.

Dunno why it's necessary to specify unsigned, but that's what it is.

 

[Phoenix]

Turned on my PC only to read that there might be a GTX Titan "Black Edition" coming soon.

Oh and a GTX 790.

 

[sesselpupser]

Unsigned integer.

Dunno why it's necessary to specify unsigned, but that's what it is.

Ah, thank you, I thought it could be that (honest!) but since it makes no sense in the context - the line underneath is 'portd_index = 0;' so portd_index is only ever in the range 0-4 (since it must reach 4 to be >3, right?) - I thought I'd ask. I thought it was redundant anyway since portd_index is already declared as an unsigned short... Or maybe that means it has to be entered as '3u' to avoid a conflict with how it has already been declared? I don't know, this example does run on a PIC but it does seem to have a couple of redundancies.


Side question, one that I'm struggling to put into words so please forgive me if I ramble a little:

You know how if you just use, say, 10 as a value, that could be either 10 in decimal, 16 in hex or 3 in binary so you prefix it with either 0x or 0b if you don't mean it to be decimal? Or in the case above, you append a number with u to make it an unsigned value? What is that pre/suffix called? I keep thinking to call it a data type but that's reserved for ints, shorts, floats and all that... And any int, short, float or char can be referred to with decimal, hex or binary, so you could have:

char letter = 0b1001;
​

So that's got a data type, variable name, ??? and value, but what is the ??? called? Without knowing what to search for Googling it was impossible, hence why I had to ask here instead.

 

[BobK]

@neema_t, going back to your 'if (portd_index > 3u)' question for a sec: 3 by itself is considered a signed integer, and since portd_index is declared unsigned, C++ will issue a warning (being needlessly pedantic IMO; one of the reasons I don't like C++).

For your side question: 10 is the decimal integer 10. Hexadecimal 10 (aka 16) would be 0x10. 010 would be octal 10, or decimal 8 if you prefer (also hex 8). Floating point 10 would be 10.0.

The actual name of the "u" is, I believe, a type modifier. However, type modifiers are usually used in declarations such as "unsigned int x" where "int" is the type and "unsigned" is the type modifier; similarly "long double f". Note that the "u" is sort a special case in that it can only be used with literals.

Actually, the original comparison could have been written as 'if ( portd_index > (unsigned)3 )', but I believe C++ complains about using casts in cases like this; some versions certainly did in the past. Giving a warning for a perfectly legitimate cast used in a situation that casts were intended for is another reason I don't like C++. Bizarrely, the expression 'if ( portd_index > ((unsigned)3) )' will not generate a warning.

 

[sesselpupser]

@BobK, that's extremely handy info. It'll take a couple more readings to 'get' it but the general gist of it makes sense, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me so thank you very much!

 

[Gabkicks]

I dusted out my case a bit and installed Cooler Master v1000 power supply in Prep for my 2 ASUS r9 280x DC2T's . Still got a gtx 780 DC2 ATM

 

[MHPALA]

I love the Direct CU cards 👍. Why not just buy another 780 DCUII?

 

[Gabkicks]

I want to do some mining and AMD/gcn is better ATM. I may grab another 780 in the future

 

[JoshB1984]

I trying to figure it out what wrong with Chrome Pepper Flash cause videos laggy.

 

[nk4e]

Installed Ubuntu on a USB.

 

[sesselpupser]

Going back to the streaming thing, I've just read that Open Broadcast Software supports NVEnc (the hardware H.264 encoder built into Nvidia's Kepler GPUs)... If I could broadcast, but not necessarily record, locally using OBS and NVEnc, in theory that could reduce the latency of gaming enough to make games playable. Possibly. I don't really know, I'm just guessing, but it's an alternative to Kainy and Splashtop.

Edit: Hold the phone, I've found something even better. Limelight is an Android app that fools GeForce Experience into thinking whatever you install it on is a Shield, thereby giving you access to the hardware H.264 encoder and also hardware-accelerated decoding via the Tegra 3 chip (I think?). I can't wait to give that a go.

In unrelated news, I've just read this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/30/are-ssds-reliable/ and now I think I'll get around to buying that UPS I've been on the fence about since sudden power loss is a major killer of SSDs. In even less related news, I'm buying an oscilloscope; £190 for a Siglent SDS1052DL. It's probably not great as far as 'scopes go but it's more compact than a CRO, cheaper and probably a lot less awkward than one of those ARM-based iPod-sized DSOs and I think it's just a rebrand of the Rigol DS1052E (Dave 'EEVblog' Jones seemed to like it for amateur/student use) which appears to be either discontinued or just out of stock in the UK.