Moonlight Steamlink: Graphics glitch, intermittent grey triangle overlay with higher resolutions/bitrates

[geekycow]

Describe the bug
Streaming display has a grey triangle in the top right of the screen in about 1 in 4 instances of firing up the link when used at 1080p/60Hz 30Mbps or higher.

Steps to reproduce

• Select Moonlight starting with default settings.
• Change resolution to 1080p/60Hz and 30Mbps or higher.
• Connect to streaming host.
• Select Steam.
• If a grey triangle doesn't appear, stop streaming from within Steam power menu and select Steam again, repeat until grey triangle appears.

Screenshots
See attached.

Affected games
All apps, including Steam, whether or not Steam is running.

Moonlight settings (please complete the following information)

• Have any settings been adjusted from defaults?
  Yes.

• If so, which settings have been changed?
  Resolution and bitrate have been increased to 1080p/60Hz / 30Mbps.

• Does the problem still occur after reverting settings back to default?
  No. Doesn't seem to happen at the default resolution and bitrate of 720p/60Hz 10Mbps.

Client PC details (please complete the following information)

• Device: Steam Link
• OS: 692 (public)
• Network: 1Gbps
• Moonlight Version: moonlight steam link v1.0.1

Server PC details (please complete the following information)

• OS: Windows 10 Pro 17134 64bit
• CPU: Intel i5-4460
• GPU: GTX 960 2Gb
• RAM: 32Gb
• Network: 1Gbps
• GeForce Experience version: 3.19.0.94
• Nvidia GPU driver: 417.01

Moonlight Logs (please attach)
Attached.

Additional context
Triangle gets larger and issue seems to become more frequent the higher the bitrate.

moonlight.log

[cgutman]

Yep, this is known and documented on the Steam Link community forum post. I suspect a bug in the Vivante GPU drivers.

[geekycow]

Sorry. I didn't realise it was reported on other forums already. Fortunately it's a very minor issue anyway. Thank you SO much for your hard work on this project. :)

…

On Thu, 4 Jul 2019, 21:51 Cameron Gutman, ***@***.***> wrote: Yep, this is known and documented on the Steam Link community forum post. I suspect a bug in the Vivante GPU drivers. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#254?email_source=notifications&email_token=AD5PD6HXYMSV43YNZYSUJ2LP5ZPD7A5CNFSM4H5I7E62YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGODZIDWTI#issuecomment-508574541>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AD5PD6HSNCSBDYSXRWBP7BTP5ZPD7ANCNFSM4H5I7E6Q> .

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[Forceflow]

I've also experienced this.
I've captured a moonlight log from a session where the corruption appeared:

moonlight.log

My settings:

The issue:

[Forceflow]

Reply from @slouken (Valve) in mail convo:

I haven't seen that corruption before. Are you respecting the 30 Mbit limit on the video stream? If you exceed that you might be running into hardware limitations.

Looking at the bug it seems like this is the case. Moonlight should limit the bitrate to 30 Mbit maximum on the Steam Link hardware.

[cvandermeer]

I have the same problem

[Forceflow]

I've also systematically lowered the video bitrate every time I've encountered this. I'm on 26.5 atm.

[mattbell87]

+1 watching this issue

[cvandermeer]

After restarting i do not have this issue anymore, seems to be sporadic?

[Forceflow]

After restarting i do not have this issue anymore, seems to be sporadic?

I'm afraid I also get this after a fresh boot sometimes. Every time I have it, I lower the video bitrate by 0.5. I'm on 24.5 now, starting to think it is - unfortunately - not connected to bitrate.

Anyone else experiencing this on really low bitrates?

Hold on: This is not a Megabit vs Megabyte issue, right? It's uncommon for video bitrates to be expressed in Megabyte rates, but still checking ... @cgutman ?

[Forceflow]

Quick update on the workaround for this: I find it easier if you configure moonlight for steam link to not close the app when you disconnect from the session. That's an optional feature that is in the options screen in the part that is below the screen output of the options screen, usually - so quickly attach a mouse to your Steam link to configure that.

You either get the grey corruption in the stream right from the beginning, or you don't get it at all. It doesn't pop up halfway through streaming. So a quick stream disconnect (hold start + select + left shoulder + right shoulder, all together) and selecting game + resume usually fixes it. Your game (in my case: RDR2) can keep on loading and doing it's thing in the background.

[franciscomoma]

+1 With this problem with default configuration. My computer is a GTX 1050 + 7th gen Intel Core i7 running the latest update of Windows 10

[dryfish]

I've just started seeing this after playing fine with default moonlight settings (720p60?) for a week or so. The SteamLink performed a software update yesterday and I've been getting the grey triangle ever since (mostly).

Last night I swapped between moonlight and steam streaming then back to moonlight but at 1080p60 and the grey triangle went away.

This morning it's back again (still at 1080p60) - no time to play at the moment but have just managed to ssh into steamlink.

[cgutman]

It looks like sleeping for 500 ms before creating our streaming window avoids triggering the bug.