What you're describing sounds more like 720p or/with H264. Stadia drops to that if it considers the connection not good enough (even if you started with 1080p or higher). Doesn't change the codec mid-run though, only the resolution.

I have a 27" and image quality is great with 1080p and VP9. I can sometimes briefly see artifacts on darker images, but that's about it.
Consider using StadiaEnhanced instead of Stadia+, to monitor or set the quality. It does pretty much the same things, but it remembers the settings between runs and can force higher resolutions.

As for the topic at hand, there's one thing that Stadia does "wrong" here, they may have their reasons...I dunno, but this free week is still behind the Pro subscription, so not much of a free- week. If they use free-week as a bait to catch future customers, well, they need to go fishing in a bigger pond, as in in make it actually free for all.

I added here an example of 720p+H264 vs 1440p+VP9 (use the slider):
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=0439cee4-fe06-11ea-bf88-a15b6c7adf9a [External Link]
Also one thing to mention, the difference is much more dramatic in motion, that is actual gameplay.

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Quoting: The_Aquabatbut let me add something... everyone is saying that AMD drivers were trash, but the last Nvidia card I used was a Geforce 440MX, I give you that when it was ATI and not AMD it was a mess, but when AMD started getting the management the fglrx driver improved a lot I guess since the HD 3xxx series or so. I've been gaming on AMD since then, and I give you that it was a worse experience, (with ATI it was a disaster) but with AMD it wasn't that bad, it was totally possible to have a decent gaming experience. And since the gallium drivers things kept getting better and better.

So I take it that is specifically about fglrx here.

Well, I'm also a bit annoyed when I see fglrx categorized as trash, is like people like to go only to extremes, with awesome and trash and the like being the only vocabulary options, and nothing in between.

In all fairness IMO fglrx was usable, or yes, decent. When Steam introduced the Linux client I had a AMD HD6990 in my system. Now, the HD6990 was a good card at the time (at launch it was touted as "Simply the most powerful card in the world", imagine that) but on Linux only one of the two GPUs was working (Crossfire crap and all that), and performance was significantly reduced.
Nevertheless, fglrx did managed to run all the Linux games I had, with just minor issues. Good times.

Afterwards I switched to a HD7970, which did much better (again with fglrx) and eventually went back to Nvidia, but yes, for as long as I used it, fglrx served me well and hardly deserves the label "trash".

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Good for them.

I know I'm swimming against the current here, but despite the fact that their interests don't really align with us, I always liked and respected Nvidia.
They always treated me right with their drivers, they worked on par with the Windows ones, they were reliable (sure, bug happens), and in about 20 years as a Linux user I knew I could always count on them to deliver the best performance.
Sure, there's more than looking for performance, I'm not living in a bubble oblivious to the existing Nvidia issues, and I've heard (or some experienced myself) them all, here, reddit, discord or whatever place where someone mentions Nvidia and shit start hitting the fan, so please, don't try to "open my eyes". And I'm not an "Nvidia or bust" person either, as you can see I'm rocking a AMD GPU right now, since it was the best card for the money at the time.
Maybe is a bit of nostalgia, since in my early Linux years I used only Nvidia cards, I dunno...I used to break my system all the time in all the imaginable ways, and there was a single constant piece if software that refused to break, guess which one :)

But anyway, I just think that Nvidia is an impressive front-runner company that excels at what they do. I hope they put this acquisition to good use, so yeah, good for them.

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Quoting: AwesamLinux@dubigrasu it works for me too without spoofing now, wonder if this is a conscious change they made :smile:

Funny thing, apparently you still need the spoofing on Windows. I haven't checked personally, but if so, is a interesting move.

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Looks like Nvidia removed the chromeos/chromebooks-only requirement. Nothing official, but I can use it now without any kind of spoofing.
Can anyone confirm?

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Interesting bit from Nvidia labs:



(from the video posted in op)

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Well, I'm saying they're maybe using DXVK because I see a DXVK cache in my Stadia data files.
This is from Metro 2033:
2033_auto_save
2033_l00_intro.player
2033_l01_hunter.player
2033_l02_exhibition.player
uEngine.dxvk-cache
user.cfg

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They might be indeed using DXVK for some titles.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd who would need to fix it, and are there barriers in the way of their doing so, and whose fault is that?

Well, there isn't a single entity that is to blame or able to fix it, and is unlikely that the issues will be fixed anytime soon, (apart from unofficial forks). The bug report itself carries the label "Wontfix".

The basic motives are described (by a Chrome developer) like this:

“Our goal is to have a Stable and secure browser first, and a GPU-accelerated one second, when possible.

As we found out time and again, any sort of GPU acceleration has a lot of maintenance associated with it, between the multitude of configurations our users run, the general lack of quality of drivers (in particular on Linux), and the constant stream of incoming issue due to new hardware, driver, or distribution release.

“We don’t want to compromise the first goal (stable and secure browser), our choice is not to enable these acceleration features on Linux.

A good (and fairly recent) comprehensive story with all the relevant links can be found here:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/10/hardware-acceleration-chrome-linux [External Link]

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Quoting: PatolaEven the recent GeForce Now capability we had, it was more like a loophole from Chrome OS - so much that they did not even recognized Linux PCs using chrome to allow it to be played, we had to fake the user agent. I mean, if they care for Linux, why not bunch together chromeos and linux? After all, it works the same in either!

The video hardware decoding support needed for a quality stream is still a mess on Linux. Yes, you can play even with software decoding provided you have a good CPU, but (as Stadia has shown) this can lead to a very wide range of results, starting from very good, to disastrous.
Even on Chromebooks, only several models have been tested and guaranteed to work, others "may work".

While Google threw their hands in the air and allowed Stadia to run even on non-adequate hardware (and like I said, with disastrous results) Nvidia most likely wants to assure that some standards of quality are still met. Standards that unfortunately right now can't be guaranteed on Linux. Nothing nefarious, no "anti-Linux" agenda here. Heck, the web client in question is unsupported even on Windows.

That being said, they're still working on extending their support to other platforms. If that means also Linux, it remains to be seen.

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