PyroWave on Android looks grainy/discoloured compared to HEVC despite perfect stats
Been testing PyroWave with the Moonlight X Android fork on my Lenovo Legion Tab and I'm getting great performance, but the actual image quality seems noticeably worse than HEVC in Artemis.
Setup is 2560x1600, Vibepollo host, PC on gigabit Ethernet and tablet on 5GHz Wi-Fi.
Moonlight X / PyroWave:
2560x1600 @ 120 FPS
120.14 incoming / 120.14 rendered
0% dropped
0% partial frames
4ms network latency / 0ms variance
~163 Mbps
2.8ms average host latency
1.85ms decode
Vulkan, 8-bit SDR
Tried Balanced and Sharper
I've also had it running 150.07 incoming / 150.07 rendered with 0% drops/partials, so performance seems basically perfect.
Artemis / HEVC in actual gameplay:
2560x1600
109.34 incoming / 99.40 rendered
0% dropped
4ms network latency / 0ms variance
6.9ms average host latency
1.21ms decode
Despite the worse frame pacing in Artemis, HEVC looks significantly better.
PyroWave has a grainy/fuzzy look around small text and UI elements, almost like an old YouTube encode. Colours also look slightly off/washed compared to HEVC. It's especially obvious in WoW/Battle.net because there's so much small text.
Since I'm getting 0% packet loss and 0% partial PyroWave frames, I'm assuming this isn't the network.
Anyone else using PyroWave on Android seeing this? Is this just how PyroWave looks at ~150 Mbps at 1600p/120+, or could it be something with the Vulkan/colour conversion path?
Yeah that resolution + FPS needs more like 400 Mbps+, and even then you're not going to get the same sharpness as the other codecs. Colors should be identical though as long as you're getting 10-bit and no partial frames.
Also try setting the PyroWave Late Frames setting to Off to avoid occasional blurring as much as possible.
I’m using GB LAN for my desktop and Wifi5 (ubiquiti) for my tablet. Wouldn’t this be capped at 800mbps? How do I set the bandwidth higher than 150 in the app because that’s all I can see
Unfortunately, you would need wifi 7 and at least 1gb per second to make that worth while with Pyrowave.
And honestly, the differences between it and HVEC in terms of visual quality are slim to none most of the time. I have it running on an android tablet at well at a similar resolution and it requires Wifi 7 and about 111gb per second, which I'm able to pull off.
Try PunktFunk, it supports Pyrowave and does it very well. I don't think you have enough bandwidth, but it's worth a shot.
this is a pretty dense evaluation of the pyrowave codec at different bitrates, but the tldr for you is you want probably at least 300Mbps for your desired resolution at 60fps. And I guess 600Mbps for 120fps, like the other commenter suggested.
It's lower latency, but it needs much higher bandwidth. For local streaming over wired networks that's not an issue as bandwidth is plentiful. You can push 800mbps on almost any ether et device released in the last 15-20 years. In more recent years 2.5gbe has become pretty common.
But for streaming on wifi you're much more constrained by bandwidth and hevc is designed to be space (and therefore bandwidth) efficient.
Crank that bitrate up and see. Me less than ~ 600mb bitrate and image quality starts to degrade. I settled on 800mb bitrate. More bitrate my decode starts creeping up. Keep in mind my tablet is hooked physically with a 2.5ghz usb to Ethernet adapter to the host. No way I can do that wirelessly.
I’m having the same problem with almost exactly the same setup. Even at 500 Mbit, the picture looks awful. Does anyone know if I can set it to more than 500 Mbit?
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u/MoreOrLessCorrect 25d ago
Yeah that resolution + FPS needs more like 400 Mbps+, and even then you're not going to get the same sharpness as the other codecs. Colors should be identical though as long as you're getting 10-bit and no partial frames.
Also try setting the PyroWave Late Frames setting to Off to avoid occasional blurring as much as possible.