In-home Streaming + Wayland

[Mushoz]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): February 18th build
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch 5.0.2 Kernel
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes, system is fully up-to-date

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Whenever I run my desktop with Wayland, and connect my steamlink to my Desktop, the screen on the TV will be rubbish with every color of the rainbow all over the screen. The screencapture of the desktop is clearly not going as planned. Actions still work fine, and I can navigate via the controller connected to the steamlink by simply watching what I am doing on my computer screen. Once I launch a game, the corrupted mess disappears and I can properly see the game being streamed to the steamlink.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Use Wayland (I am using Gnome on Wayland in case that matters)
2. Start steam
3. Start steamlink
4. Connect to desktop

What happens:
I see a corrupted mess on my TV

What should happen:
I should be seeing steam big-picture mode, as my computer display is showing.

Workaround:
Use gnome on Xorg.

[MayeulC]

I am affected as well. Steam Remote play doesn't work, neither does remote play together. Input and audio works perfectly.

The computers used for testing were:

• Archlinux desktop (AMD R9 Fury, Mesa, RADV), native steam (and flatpak)
• Archlinux laptop (Intel integrated graphics), via flatpak

Clients tested:

• Android application, LAN/LTE
• laptop with sway (with and without hardware decoding)
• desktop with sway (with and without hardware decoding)

Servers tested:

• ❌ desktop with sway (with flatpak, without, with and without HW encoding)
• ❌ laptop with sway (with and without HW encoding)
• ❌ desktop with plasma wayland (with HW encoding)
• ✔️ desktop with i3 (with HW encoding)
• ✔️ desktop with plasma on X11 (with HW encoding)

I am thus reasonably certain that the issue is with Wayland or XWayland (I would need to test plasma without HW encoding to be sure there are not two separate symptoms here). Screen sharing from applications like Firefox do not work on Wayland either.
A possible future solution might leverage pipewire for capture.

I haven't seen anything on the client besides corruption (like uninitialized memory, with a few textures from former apps), even after a game starts. I used simple games for my tests (FTL: Faster than light, Crypt of the necrodancer), and only tried 3D games like Portal 2 on X11 to confirm it still worked. Do 3D games use a different capture method? (Vulkan layer, OpenGL lib injection). Which ones should I try?

Same issue on Plasma Wayland (tested on Arch Linux). I assume Steam would have to ask pipewire to stream the desktop.

[tgunnoe]

Same issue on Sway

[PMaynard]

Same on Fedora 32, with RPMFusion steam, and Sway.
Audio works. But no visual on the steam link device iPhone current iOS.

[sinedoOo]

Same issue on Fedora 32 + Gnome wayland

[PMaynard]

anyone tried the flatpak version?

[fuzunspm]

same issue on Arch Linux swaywm/wayland + iPad setup

[MayeulC]

anyone tried the flatpak version?

@PMaynard: Re-read my comment, I am using the flatpak version.

This is pretty much a known issue for every wayland environment at that point, so I don't think there's much point in adding pages of comments that everyone has the same issue, and it would be more productive for everyone to upvote the issue.

Valve seems to be working on a wayland compositor, I believe the capture functionality could be integrated into it, and then have the compositor act as a client to also display stuff on the screen (if needed). Not sure if that's the way they want to go forward with, but that's what I would do. Pipewire and waypipe are other, more general options.

[yokem55]

Playing around with this a bit more - in a sway session at least it seems that only the big picture interface has trouble being streamed. Starting a game while looking at the normal monitor with the keyboard launches the game, and the game will then appear over the steam link (android app or standalone device) properly. This is only a partial work around, but it does mean xwayland has what it needs to capture and stream the game.

[MayeulC]

@yokem55, that's interesting, it never worked for me. Neither steam nor browsers are able to capture other Xwayland windows, only displaying a black background. @emersion hinted that it should work already, so I am not sure what's going on, I will re-test soon. Some of it could be due to multi-monitor specificities.

[awmath]

@emersion hinted that it should work already, so I am not sure what's going on

I think there has been a missunderstanding as @emersion was talking about Steam Play, which works fine on wayland, whereas this topic is about Steam Remote Play, which doesn't.