No this is not for split screen playing over Network, there's Parsec for that.
No this is not me emulating Stadia playing a game over a Network, there's Steam Remote for that.
What is it: This is me and my friend playing on my two LAN connected computers seeing what the other person sees in a Picture-In-Picture mode click-through overlay with very low latency LAN-video streaming, see image below. You can do it as well for absolutely free and no additional hardware (except having two computers obviously).
Who is it for: Those of you who play COOP games with friends/loved ones with computers connected through LAN and wish you could see what they see almost instantly in an overlayed window.
Explanation:
Spoiler:
I and a friend recently played Portal 2 together in COOP, we play pretty much all COOP games together (stuff like Dying Light, Portal 2 etc).
We do this through my two computers at my home because even though Split Screen can be pretty fun, it's just more fun to have your own keyboard/mouse and monitor for us.
So while we played Portal 2 we were absolutely stricken by how awesome one particular feature was... You could press TAB to see exactly what your friend is seeing in a Picture-In-Picture mode overlay image to the bottom right of your screen, and vice versa. It just made it more fun, suddenly he could tell me "look at this" and I didn't have to turn around and look at his screen.
See bottom right in this video (not my video) for example:
It was basically just really convenient and made us feel like it was a super natural feature that pretty much all coop games should have. So I tried to get this working as something to have in every game we play, ended up making a thread and asked for help from the humpers where the glorious and beautiful garus gave me a link to a tool used to overlay any window with click-through functionality (which is a must):
https://www.nfohump.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3271104
But the problem was video streaming over network. I first solved it by using OBS Studio and recording over UDP. But the latency as well performance overhead was lacking (and other things as well).
But then I found the golden goose:
NDI - Network Device Interface
Quote:
Network Device Interface (NDI) is a royalty-free software standard developed by NewTek to enable video-compatible products to communicate, deliver, and receive broadcast quality video in a high quality, low latency manner that is frame-accurate and suitable for switching in a live production environment.
So now I and my friend can play ANY game together on my two computers and we can see what the other person sees in their game with almost zero latency (I'm not too sure what the actual latency is, it's perceivable but extremely low to the point where it doesn't matter).
To be clear here, we are streaming over LAN, not internet but I'm pretty sure it can be used to stream over the internet (though you'd have to figure out how yourself).
So here's the guide, it's EXTREMELY EASY:
(Me playing Hollow Knight and seeing Hollow Knight being played on my other computer with a Picture in Picture mode window (the smaller window) overlayed on top, follow my guide below to do it yourself over LAN:)
3: Right click NDI Scan Converter Tray Icon and choose the framerate you want, I chose 60p. Choose Audio Source if you also want your friend to receive your audio (probably not a good idea since there is still a very small amount of latency), I choose Silence.
4: Switch to the Studio Monitor program you opened up before, change these settings:
• Settings -> Window -> Allow HW Acceleration (works for me with my Nvidia card, your experience may vary.
• Settings -> Video -> Lowest Latency (no idea if it actually does much but I tried with it on and off, it didn't get worse so...)
• Manually change the size of the window so all you see is the video stream (no black borders).
• Settings -> Output -> Hide Window Border
5: Right Click in the middle of the Studio Monitor program, at the top of the right click window you should have two computer names.
One of them should be the computer you're using right now and the other should be the other computer that you also have Scan Converter and Studio Monitor running on.
First try selecting your computer and you should see all the monitors you have connected, try choosing one of them.
You should now be seeing what's on that monitor.
Now right click and choose the other computer, you should now see what's on that computers monitor. If you don't and it's just dark then you probably have a firewall issue or something (I had to disable and turn off my VPN for it to work (which is fine since when we game that's all we do)).
Do the same on the other computer.
Now you have two computers streaming their desktop monitors to each other over LAN.
6: Time to overlay it on top of your game.
Turn on any game and put it in Windowed/Borderless Windowed mode.
Turn on OnTopReplica.
Right Click -> Select Window -> select the NDI Studio Monitor window (should be named something like "NDI - Desktopnamesomethingsomething").
Change the size of the window so you only see the video stream and so it's large enough for what you want.
Right Click -> Position Lock -> Bottom Right or move it where you want it manually.
Right Click -> De-Click Show Window Border so the border goes away.
When you feel the window is in the right position and that it's large enough:
Right Click -> Enable Click-Through.
7: Alt-Tab back to the game and you should have a high quality Picture-In-Picture mode view of what your friend sees (including your own stream in their OnTopReplica window).
Now if you want to change it you'll have to alt-tab and choose the OnTopReplica Window from the taskbar and then right click, there's no hotkey for enable/disable click-through unfortunately. Personally I just restart the program, easier.
There is one limitation that I don't like, you can't choose which window to capture, you can only capture the Desktop. Not a big deal since it still works for me but that would have made it even better.
Also, you can technically have Studio Monitor on top of your game since it has a "Always On-Top" option... But since there's sadly no click-through functionality it's useless for this purpose.
Enjoy.
There is a performance hit of somewhere around 10 fps but not a big deal for me.
• Alternative to OnTopReplica: https://github.com/LionelJouin/PiP-Tool
It's waaaaay worse though since it has no click through functionality and that's a must have for this purpose so it's basically useless since you'll be clicking the window and loosing game window focus constantly even if the game you're playing doesn't have a cursor.
_________
Other uses:
• I haven't tried it since I don't have or use a webcam but I'm pretty sure you can use NDI Virtual Input to input a Webcam-capture video into the NDI stream and stream it to your mate who can then overlay your face above his/her game so they can look at you while talking to you without having a second monitor open/turning their neck every time. Perhaps good for gaming with your loved one or for those of you are *GASP* social people?
• If you're a streamer then you can send your game play NDI video source to your other non-gaming computer and let it stream your NDI-video for you thus offloading your gaming computer. No silly capture card nonsense required.
There is even an unofficial NDI Open Broadcaster Plugin you can use (no idea how it works or how well it functions but there it is):
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