Stadia Pro will soon drop down to one free month

Right now, I'm a little disappointed.
In Chrome, the maximum resolution is 1080p for the moment, but I sometimes feel like I'm playing in 720p because the games are so ugly.
I have a 1440p screen and I would like to enjoy this resolution ALL the time.
I have a strong enough connection to play in 4K...

Last edited by Lolo01 on 20 May 2020 at 5:05 pm UTC

Quoting: Lolo01Right now, I'm a little disappointed.
In Chrome, the maximum resolution is 1080p for the moment, but I sometimes feel like I'm playing in 720p because the games are so ugly.
I have a 1440p screen and I would like to enjoy this resolution ALL the time.
I have a strong enough connection to play in 4K...

From what I've seen, 1440p appears to be there and some people have seen it so it looks like some sort of slow roll-out perhaps. Would definitely be nice to see more resolutions and to have a built-in way to show what res you're at.

On community forum from Stadia staff :

Currently, Stadia is limited to just 1080p via Chrome, higher resolutions are available only via CCU on a TV. The expectation has been that additional resolutions would be possible in 2020, but we don't have confirmation of the date that this will happen yet.

Is there a free to try option?

Quoting: subIs there a free to try option?

Yes, it's free for 2 months right now. Soon it will drop back down to 1 month. The link is in the article.

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: subIs there a free to try option?

Yes, it's free for 2 months right now. Soon it will drop back down to 1 month. The link is in the article.

That's my question. I have to check the terms of service.
I'm not looking for a contract that runs, let's say,
12 months and they just offer me the first two for "free".

That's not what I would consider "free to try". :)

Quoting: Lolo01

4K is available via Chrome if you have a 4K display - that's likely just outdated information. I can confirm I was one of the ones to get native 1440P in some games so that support is coming. The stadia+ extension still works for forcing 4K on non-4K displays.

Last edited by drlamb on 20 May 2020 at 7:47 pm UTC

still not available in all european countries.... ridiculous for a big company like google

As long as they want the digits upfront they can keep their trial as far as I am concerned.

Last edited by Schattenspiegel on 20 May 2020 at 6:12 pm UTC

Quoting: sub

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: subIs there a free to try option?

Yes, it's free for 2 months right now. Soon it will drop back down to 1 month. The link is in the article.

That's my question. I have to check the terms of service.
I'm not looking for a contract that runs, let's say,
12 months and they just offer me the first two for "free".

That's not what I would consider "free to try". :)

You pay monthly and can cancel anytime - it's what I did with the original Pro offer. I've had 4 free months of Pro (re-subbing for the 2nd offer), and have yet to pay. And after that you can use the 'free' tier indefinitely.

Quoting: sub

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: subIs there a free to try option?

Yes, it's free for 2 months right now. Soon it will drop back down to 1 month. The link is in the article.

That's my question. I have to check the terms of service.
I'm not looking for a contract that runs, let's say,
12 months and they just offer me the first two for "free".

That's not what I would consider "free to try". :)

That's exactly what free to try is. You're free to try it. Cancel the subscription when you open your trial. Anyway, that's their deal take it or leave it.

Quoting: Lolo01Right now, I'm a little disappointed.
In Chrome, the maximum resolution is 1080p for the moment, but I sometimes feel like I'm playing in 720p because the games are so ugly.
I have a 1440p screen and I would like to enjoy this resolution ALL the time.
I have a strong enough connection to play in 4K...

I have a 1080p screen and it was still blurry. I had to install the mobile app to manage data and display settings. At both 4K and 1080p (data consumption) Destiny 2 was still muddy and blurry, or at the least not very crisp like it is natively. It does work in Vivaldi at least and didn't require Chrome itself to be installed.

I didn't like that I had to use the mobile app to manage some aspects. Also RMB kept kicking me out of D2 and back to the browser and that's a huge pain that I don't want to troubleshoot.

Quoting: randyl

Destiny 2 is always running at 1080P and is a bad example of the visual quality Stadia is capable of. 60FPS was definitely the priority there as it runs at ~medium settings.

Quoting: drlamb

Quoting: randyl

Destiny 2 is always running at 1080P and is a bad example of the visual quality Stadia is capable of. 60FPS was definitely the priority there as it runs at ~medium settings.

Except it doesn't look like 1080p. It barely looks like 720. The native 1080p experience and PS4 Pro looks better than it does through Stadia. The performance is good. The appearance isn't that good to me, but isn't a deal breaker. The problems with mouse and keyboard input knocking me out of the game and back to the browser might be a big deal though.

I installed The Stadia Plus extension for Chromium, and now Assassin's Creed Odyssey is beautiful.
It looks like I'm using 1440p res now (and vp9 codec).
You need to activate both options of the extension on the Stadia tab.

Last edited by Lolo01 on 20 May 2020 at 9:08 pm UTC

Quoting: RafiLinux

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: drlamb

Quoting: randyl

Destiny 2 is always running at 1080P and is a bad example of the visual quality Stadia is capable of. 60FPS was definitely the priority there as it runs at ~medium settings.

Except it doesn't look like 1080p. It barely looks like 720. The native 1080p experience and PS4 Pro looks better than it does through Stadia. The performance is good. The appearance isn't that good to me, but isn't a deal breaker. The problems with mouse and keyboard input knocking me out of the game and back to the browser might be a big deal though.

I don't like the game per se but the game looked great and had zero lag input via of KB and Mouse for me. Did you try it with the Stadia+ ext by Mafrans?

I didn't install any extensions. The Stadia page didn't reference any extension. So I would need to install a third party browser extension to make it work well and look good? While I really appreciate the suggestion to help make the experience good, it is ridiculous to me that I would need such an extension yet and another reason for me to not pay Google $10/mo.

Quoting: RafiLinux

Quoting: randylI didn't install any extensions. The Stadia page didn't reference any extension. So I would need to install a third party browser extension to make it work well and look good? While I really appreciate the suggestion to help make the experience good, it is ridiculous to me that I would need such an extension yet and another reason for me to not pay Google $10/mo.

I don't know your setup but the game looks great prior to the ext install. The ext just adds some quality of life stuff and if you having issues on your setup you can force to play in a format that is better.

I see it the same way I see Steam, which I'm new to also, I have to use 3rd party sites to get it to do exact what I want it to do: ProtonDB for proper listings, SteamDB for accurate numbers of online players and SteamWiki for a list of DRM-FREE Steam games. Even with GOG I have to use MaGOG to see EXACTLY the types of games I wish to purchase.

I hear you on the pricing though and such.

I was surprised it didn't look good to me as well. My rig isn't new, but it's reasonably solid (i7/4790, 16GB, GTX1660ti, SATA SSD storage) over gigabit fiber (1000/250). The screen images weren't artifact filled or anything drastic. It is a general fuzziness and pixelization of UI components. There are a couple troubleshooting steps I can take to explore the issue. Maybe it's just a bad internet day.

edit: I don't have to install any third part tools to make the basic functionality of Steam work as advertised. It's why I use Steam and Itch more often than I do GoG or any other stores that don't directly support Linux natively. Even Proton is directly supported by Valve. If Google wants me to install an extension as part of their setup (like Gnome extensions does) then I'll weigh that, but a third part extension is different to me. At any time Google can disable that extension functionality on a whim and I would be screwed. So Goog doesn't get a pass from me on this.

Last edited by randyl on 20 May 2020 at 10:26 pm UTC

I just tested it just for fun and wow what a bad experience that was. I have a 200 Mbit/s connection and at the time no one except me was using the internet, so I had the full bandwidth at my disposal. I play games in 1080p and for me that's enough, but the game (PUBG) was still blurry very often, although when checking the stadia menu, it said that I have an excellent connection. I must say the video quality really disappointed me.

Also the whole thing is still pretty raw. For example, I simply wasn't able to quit PUBG. There was this menu where you could choose resume, settings etc. but there simply was no entry for "quit" so I ended up alt-tabbing out of chromium to quit it manually.
Then, once you've chosen one pro game to play, your stadia home screen is a wallpaper-sized picture of that game with a play button on it. No "pro library" to choose one of the other pro games. If you want to do that, you must go to the store and find the game in an alphabetically sorted list (as far as I've seen, there is not even a search function for the store).

I had considered stadia to become a PC alternative for me, since the monthly price is less than half of what would accumulate to get a new PC and upgrade it every now and then. But good thing I tried it first. For me the only reason to subscribe to pro for a Linux gamer would be if you're desperate to play games that are unplayable on Linux due to anticheat (and pay a hefty 120 bucks a year for that).

Otherwise I suggest you spend the money on something that's actually worth it. Like supporting GOL :)

As long as it's free though, it doesn't hurt to try I guess.

Quoting: mylkastill not available in all european countries.... ridiculous for a big company like google

Yeah.. same here in Australia.

Quoting: Duke TakeshiAlso the whole thing is still pretty raw. For example, I simply wasn't able to quit PUBG. There was this menu where you could choose resume, settings etc. but there simply was no entry for "quit" so I ended up alt-tabbing out of chromium to quit it manually.
Then, once you've chosen one pro game to play, your stadia home screen is a wallpaper-sized picture of that game with a play button on it. No "pro library" to choose one of the other pro games. If you want to do that, you must go to the store and find the game in an alphabetically sorted list (as far as I've seen, there is not even a search function for the store).

You have to keep the esc key pressed to see the two options continue the game or quit the game.