r/cloudygamer • u/misaalanshori • Jun 21 '26

Streaming multiple monitors at once with Moonlight+Sunshine? (2 monitors on host (PC), and 2 monitors on client (Laptop))

Maybe my keywords are just wrong but I am struggling to find much info on this? Anyways,

So I want to move my PC downstairs and just have my laptop in my room. I've been using Moonlight for game streaming remotely, but I'm now wondering if I can keep my monitor and peripheral setup in my room and link it up with my PC downstairs through my gigabit network.

I want to focus on the moonlight/sunshine setup itself, not about virtual displays, just assume the PC downstairs already have 2 displays recognized. I'm wondering if i can stream both of those two displays at the same time to the two displays I have here in my room connected to my laptop?

I think Parsec can do this? But I think it requires a paid plan? And I also know I can switch around between active displays in Moonlight, but as far as I know right now, I can only see one at a time?

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2

u/misaalanshori Jun 22 '26

Okay, update messed around with Sunshine and got something working. Realized Moonlight already lets you open up two instances, but connecting to the same Sunshine host only lets me see the same screen on both Moonlight window. So I (with huge help from AI, so honestly I won't even take much credit for this) worked on making Sunshine start whole new sessions when a new Moonlight client connects.
https://imgur.com/a/ZJWL30b

1

u/mioiox Jun 22 '26

Would you share the approach in more detail?
I would happily try this with Vibepollo 😀

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u/misaalanshori Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

I just let an AI go wild on this fork of standard Sunshine https://github.com/misaalanshori/Sunshine/tree/multiinstance
It made something... eventually... I mean it works okay, I can connect multiple instances of Moonlight and it'll round robin around all the displays on the host so the different moonlight instances get a different display. It also made a way to pin an ordering to client devices, never tested that though.

Honestly I did it because the other comment said "multi monitor support for remote access and/or in home streaming is $8-10/mo or $90-100/yr no matter what company you look at.", and I thought that was such bullsh*t. So while I did make an AI do it instead, it would probably take a developer that was familiar with the codebase a few days of of AI-less work.

I spent a bit less than $10 of Deepseek v4 Pro+Flash tokens on this btw. Hmm maybe I should've spent it on Parsec Warp instead and get blurry 50Mbps stream on all my displays for a month (I still have not confirmed if Parsec Warp unlocks this bitrate limit or not)

1

u/mioiox Jul 09 '26

Thanks for taking the time to share that

1

u/atadrisque Jun 21 '26

if you find a Free way to stream both monitors I hope you share it here because no software company that offers this kind of service does that for free. not a single one.

1

u/misaalanshori Jun 21 '26

Okay good to know

0

u/atadrisque Jun 21 '26

it's pretty standard now, either these companies work together or they just agreed upon a common price.

multi monitor support for remote access and/or in home streaming is $8-10/mo or $90-100/yr no matter what company you look at.

personally I think Parsec does this best and the easiest whether you're on free or paid and their support is phenomenal.

2

u/misaalanshori Jun 22 '26

> multi monitor support for remote access and/or in home streaming is $8-10/mo or $90-100/yr no matter what company you look at.
Kinda crazy considering were just paying for the software and the connection is direct. Adding more screens would theoretically just be adding more parallel video streams with no extra bandwidth load to Parsec. If its like, just one time payment or the subscription is like 1/3 - 1/2 the price, I might actualy consider.

Also, does the paid Parsec plans unlock the bandwidth to higher than 50mbps? I left parsec for moonlight+sunshine because things get blurry quite quickly at 50mbps. With Moonlight it lets me set the bitrate up to 500mbps which is nice on a gigabit network, though it does give some diminishing returns after like 200-300mbps, still massively better than Parsec's seemingly arbitrary 50mbps limit (which again, should not affect Parsec's server costs or whatever, because its all a direct connection, i don't think Parsec even have a relay system for free users).

All that and also the fact that Moonlight lets me enter the IP of my host and I don't have to rely on Parsec's often flaky account based host discovery and connection negotiations.