Occasionally, I want to play a good game and clear my mental slate. Where I want to sit or what I want to do has changed over the years. I used to play while using a recumbent bike at 3-5 mph for years. Now I am happy to entertain myself without rearranging my entire space or fussing with cords or having gym equipment in the living room.
Finding Network Device Interface(NDI) software has been a game changer. NDI from a mainstream perspective is a popular tool for stage presentations when you want to control cameras from a station on the network. Since I have a great home network, I figured this would be a great way to solve everything.
Here is a rough mock up of my console station. A ZowieBox takes in the signals from the HDMI switch. The HDMI switch allows me to set the station up once and press a physical button to change signal source. For now I am picking up the controller from the station if I want to change console. Using the output of the Zowiebox to play on my tv or pick-up from my laptop, home office, or on the treadmill. The best part I can replay retro games directly on the original consoles. The latency is low in both visuals and inputs. Great for games that need split second decisions.
Testing out the setup put me in a strange position of standing at the bottom of the stairs changing settings and testing the results. Using Armored Core 6 by FromSoftware was a great choice. The following settings worked best for me.
Main Stream, Encoder Settings:
- Codec: H.264
- Profile: HP
- Bitrate: 125%
- Frame Rate: 30
- I Frame Interval: 60
Audio Settings:
- Format: AAC
- Bitrate: 192
- Source: HDMI
NDI: Enabled
- Quality: NDI | HX2
To make the experience a little more immersive I use an Apple Vision Pro with the surround sound coming through NDI monitor apps or Virtual Mac Display. Turning on the Background sounds can help filter out undesired sounds or bring in another level of immersion. Bus is great for suspenseful games in industrial horror.
I tried out with a couple of other great products like Virtual Desktops, Steam Remote Play, Xbox Remote, and Moonlight. Each accomplished the goal of being able to switch up my environments but came with too much overhead for my use case.
My further plans include using the Reality ToolKit to export assets that match the content being streamed. Adding to the atmosphere by layering in addition audio, animated models, and proximity based events. These are options built are into the toolkit. For now this is a great way to spend a couple of hours without getting distracted by updates, accessory conflicts, and high latency while having the experience of a large screen with surround sound in any room of my home for any platform no matter the decade.
