Mountain lion AirPlay with games

[dladendorf]

Hey! Just wondering about this.
I have a 1080p HDTV and was thinking about getting an AppleTV for a few reasons. I'm currently in Japan, and I want to see if AirPlay will stream a live video game, ie. Diablo 3, so technically using my TV as a monitor over AirPlay, or should I just get my monitor shipped over to me.

Any comments or opinions on how AirPlay works with games over Mac or anything?

 

[arashb]

Hey! Just wondering about this.
I have a 1080p HDTV and was thinking about getting an AppleTV for a few reasons. I'm currently in Japan, and I want to see if AirPlay will stream a live video game, ie. Diablo 3, so technically using my TV as a monitor over AirPlay, or should I just get my monitor shipped over to me.

Any comments or opinions on how AirPlay works with games over Mac or anything?

You can do that, not sure how well it works but I'm pretty sure it mirrors everything. Or you could get a display out to HDMI cable and use it directly like that, it'll be cheaper and probably more responsive.

 

[dladendorf]

You can do that, not sure how well it works but I'm pretty sure it mirrors everything. Or you could get a display out to HDMI cable and use it directly like that, it'll be cheaper and probably more responsive.

I've tried the HDMI cord, it's not as good quality

 

[fatefulwhisper]

Hey! Just wondering about this.
I have a 1080p HDTV and was thinking about getting an AppleTV for a few reasons. I'm currently in Japan, and I want to see if AirPlay will stream a live video game, ie. Diablo 3, so technically using my TV as a monitor over AirPlay, or should I just get my monitor shipped over to me.

Any comments or opinions on how AirPlay works with games over Mac or anything?

I've tried Diablo 3 with my 2012 MacBook Air (i7 2 GHz, w/ 8GB RAM), and an Apple TV, both of which were connected to a Time Capsule device, and a lot of frames were being dropped. It's still a bit playable, but not very smooth. I tried other games, and they also had a similar issue, but Diablo 3 had it the worst in my experience. I even tried the game at the lowest settings possible and there were still dropped frames.

FYI, I had a 1080p HDTV as well, and GM Mountain Lion installed on the laptop.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

I've tried the HDMI cord, it's not as good quality

How is it not good quality? HDMI is digital video and audio. That's about as good quality as it can get. AirPlay will not beat HDMI's quality...

 

[dladendorf]

How is it not good quality? HDMI is digital video and audio. That's about as good quality as it can get. AirPlay will not beat HDMI's quality...

HDMI from an adapter from my MacBook to my 1080p HDTV doesn't give out good quality

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I've tried Diablo 3 with my 2012 MacBook Air (i7 2 GHz, w/ 8GB RAM), and an Apple TV, both of which were connected to a Time Capsule device, and a lot of frames were being dropped. It's still a bit playable, but not very smooth. I tried other games, and they also had a similar issue, but Diablo 3 had it the worst in my experience. I even tried the game at the lowest settings possible and there were still dropped frames.

FYI, I had a 1080p HDTV as well, and GM Mountain Lion installed on the laptop.

So should I just get my apple monitor shipped out to me?

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

HDMI from an adapter from my MacBook to my 1080p HDTV doesn't give out good quality

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So should I just get my apple monitor shipped out to me?

Something is not right. By "doesn't give out good quality", what do you mean? What's your setup? What are your settings? Are you mirroring the displays or using clamshell mode or what?

 

[arashb]

Yeah I think there's another issue going on if you're not getting good quality. I use HDMI to play huge 1080 mkv movies with no problem on my tv. You gotta realize that your monitor will show things better than the tv because the bigger the tv the more stretched your image will appear, even at 1080p.

 

[dladendorf]

Something is not right. By "doesn't give out good quality", what do you mean? What's your setup? What are your settings? Are you mirroring the displays or using clamshell mode or what?

My setup is a MacBookPro 2.7 with OSX, I use it clamshell mode with a 25inch LED HDTV (cause barracks room) using the mini adapter to and HDMI cable into my TV. its a bit fuzzy? Meaning less pixles so pretty much less quality because it's stretched I'm guessing.

 

[Nitrocide]

My setup is a MacBookPro 2.7 with OSX, I use it clamshell mode with a 25inch LED HDTV (cause barracks room) using the mini adapter to and HDMI cable into my TV. its a bit fuzzy? Meaning less pixles so pretty much less quality because it's stretched I'm guessing.

You should be able to adjust the resolution settings in the System Preferences>Display page. This should clear up the "fuzziness", remember to adjust the display settings in-game also.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

My setup is a MacBookPro 2.7 with OSX, I use it clamshell mode with a 25inch LED HDTV (cause barracks room) using the mini adapter to and HDMI cable into my TV. its a bit fuzzy? Meaning less pixles so pretty much less quality because it's stretched I'm guessing.

You should be able to adjust the resolution settings in the System Preferences>Display page. This should clear up the "fuzziness", remember to adjust the display settings in-game also.

Yes, change the resolution to 1080p. Since you're using clamshell, the MacBook Pro can display a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. That means every pixel on the HVTD is mapped to one pixel on the computer. No fuzziness.

 

[andrew.piantoni]

Play Mac OSX Games on Apple TV

If you want to air play games you are going to have to do some things to get it to work properly and you can get good results.
1. The better the mac is the better it will be able to handle the ability to push two monitors, unless you can disable one, mirroring games doesn't always work properly better to extend if possible.
2. Which game you are playing matters, if you are going to play call of duty you are going to need a mac that can play this game at a high level if you can barley run it on you mac it will not work. Example if you can run call of duty at 35 fps you will probably get 20-25 max.
3. you must have a complete Ethernet wired setup from the computer to the apple tv, its the only way you can reduce latency it doesn't matter how fast you can transfer files from your computer over wifi or how fast your movies load up on the apple tv, an ac router will not help you all that matters is latency. Because the most the apple tv really needs to sustain a 1080p feed that is converted from the Intel on board decoder is going to be around 15-20 mbps at a max of 60fps. bandwidth is totaly a non issue bandwidth wise in this certain scenario. that is also why i believe is the reason why the apple tv is only 10/100 and not gigabit
one disadvantage to the apple tv is there is no way, that i have found to test latency the result from pinging the apple tv will be incorrect becouse tcp packets have last priority if someone has found a way to get the audio/video service latency please let me know. So the only way is to use good networking tricks and go blind.
4. i would recommend cat 6 cables because cat 5 or 5e may be subtable to interference even thou pepole might say there is no advantage. When it come to trying to play game in a minimum lag environment basically you will try and get every little ms you can get and your goal is to minimize lag below 50 ms anything bellow 50 should not be noticeable.
5. I would also recommend that people use static ips for all there devices this will help greatly.
6. Disabling DHCP will reduce chatter on the network.
7. I would recommend disabling any unused services on the network there for reducing noise
8. Also pointing the apple tv dns directly to your isp dns will help, this has nothing to do with you internal network but for some reason if the apple tv needs to ask the router to translate the dns it slows down the apple tv. and if for some reason if you connection to dns is somewhat flakey for what ever reason the apple tv will go crazy.
9. Make sure your tv is set to gaming mode if your tv does not have a gaming mode then make sure any unessarly post processing are disables example Motionblur, super resolution dynamic contrast. this will make a huge difference this will probably shave at lease 20ms.
10. by this time if you did all these things you should notice that its totally playable and it will be like a console even fast action games like batman arkham, and call of duty should be playable.
If this is still not enough and you feel you need more you can do these things and see if it helps.
11. I would usually recommend not to mirror but rather extend the monitor if possible and play the game on the tv you want. you can also get an app like disable monitor to disable one monitor this will help your gpu on slower macs, especially if you are only using the intel gpu.
12. Usually if possible, its a good idea to enable anti-aliasing this will help the look of the frames being outputed to apple tv. but only if your videocard can handle it.
13. Make sure your controller is not giving out any unnecessary lag apple mouse and keyboard sometimes have lag issues.
I have done all the things above on my imac and i can play games pretty much like i am at the monitor, and it works great. I know it seems like alot but it should cost you anything but a bit time, and if its something you really want you will be pleased with the results and convenience afterwards.