About a week ago Sony pushed an update to the Remote Play app that is so awful I can't figure out what it was meant to improve or how anyone allowed it to be pushed to production. I use Remote Play under Windows 10 to stream from my PS4 Pro on my local network so that I can capture the window with OBS and stream to Twitch.
Since the latest update - the one that made the initial splash screen black instead of the old white - the quality of the stream itself has been terrible. The image is extremely compressed and is constantly jittering like it's unable to lock in a consistent FPS rate.
On top of that, OBS used to be able to capture the Remote Play window without capturing the screen-bottom overlay that appears when you use the keyboard/mouse. Now, that overlay appears in streams/recordings and attempting to change the type of capture method that OBS uses simply causes Remote Play to crash instantly as soon as it tries to call the window thread for capture.
They even screwed up controller input. Load up a character action game or some other title where you can spin the left stick quickly. The controller doesn't register diagonals quickly enough anymore, so you end up with a bunch of dropped inputs. For example, I tested using Kingdom Hearts III. When I play directly on my PS4 Pro, spinning the left stick in circles causes Sora to either spin in place or run in a tight circle. When I play using the new version of Remote Play, spinning the left stick causes Sora to spasm in place and jitter around constantly entering and leaving his "tiptoeing" animation.
How did this update get pushed out? Nothing about the program is better, it's worse across the board, and that's when it's even functional now.
Did no one test this?
As an example, I started playing Horizon: Zero Dawn yesterday using the new version of Remote Play, and it's awful.
This is "Max Quality/1080p/60FPS" according to Remote Play, with the in-game setting toggled to "Prioritize Performance."
It looks almost fine...when you're standing completely still. Any motion gets absolutely crushed by the compression and motion blur gets turned into a smearing, stuttering mess. It honestly started giving me a headache. During that Sawtooth encounter there's FPS drops into the teens.
As a contrast, here's how the app ran only about a month ago and with my capture set for about 1/3rd less total bitrate.
Since the latest update - the one that made the initial splash screen black instead of the old white - the quality of the stream itself has been terrible. The image is extremely compressed and is constantly jittering like it's unable to lock in a consistent FPS rate.
On top of that, OBS used to be able to capture the Remote Play window without capturing the screen-bottom overlay that appears when you use the keyboard/mouse. Now, that overlay appears in streams/recordings and attempting to change the type of capture method that OBS uses simply causes Remote Play to crash instantly as soon as it tries to call the window thread for capture.
They even screwed up controller input. Load up a character action game or some other title where you can spin the left stick quickly. The controller doesn't register diagonals quickly enough anymore, so you end up with a bunch of dropped inputs. For example, I tested using Kingdom Hearts III. When I play directly on my PS4 Pro, spinning the left stick in circles causes Sora to either spin in place or run in a tight circle. When I play using the new version of Remote Play, spinning the left stick causes Sora to spasm in place and jitter around constantly entering and leaving his "tiptoeing" animation.
How did this update get pushed out? Nothing about the program is better, it's worse across the board, and that's when it's even functional now.
Did no one test this?
As an example, I started playing Horizon: Zero Dawn yesterday using the new version of Remote Play, and it's awful.
This is "Max Quality/1080p/60FPS" according to Remote Play, with the in-game setting toggled to "Prioritize Performance."
It looks almost fine...when you're standing completely still. Any motion gets absolutely crushed by the compression and motion blur gets turned into a smearing, stuttering mess. It honestly started giving me a headache. During that Sawtooth encounter there's FPS drops into the teens.
As a contrast, here's how the app ran only about a month ago and with my capture set for about 1/3rd less total bitrate.
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