Castor Game Stream (1 PC, multiple players)

Set this up and had it working on my xbox using the UWP moonlight found in the store. https://github.com/TheElixZammuto/moonlight-xbox now i can play emulators via my xbox again in retail mode. id love an iOS client version, perhaps it would be possible to https://github.com/TheElixZammuto/moonlight-xbox/blob/master/libgamestream/client.c#L187 use this tidbit and merge it upstream so that all moonlight clients could have port detection/castor support?

ShabbyPenguin

did you ever get this sorted? would love to be able to stream castor on the go.

ShabbyPenguin

This has worked for me successfully. Thanks. Would a version that launches linux distros be possible. Might try the idea.

Nexxus_D

Same, just failing to install even that I have the support files locally

Jose Francisco Avelar Diaz

Parsec is a no-go sadly as Castor is built around maximizing hardware compatibility. A lot of unterminated video cards can't utilize DXGI display duplication, which is the technology used by Parsec (and unpatched Sunshine) to mirror the display. Castor uses a custom video driver that uses a custom implementation based on shared memory pages and Direct-X textures to mirror the display, which works regardless of whether a card is physically terminated or not. Given this custom driver requirement its not possible to reliably deploy Parsec while also maintaining the extremely high hardware compatibility that we currently enjoy with our custom Sunshine / Moonlight / Display Driver combo.

Black-Seraph

Is this project still alive?

Lam Vuong

Oh boy, just signed up for May to get the Castor App, however it is not working. Support Files "Temporarily unavailable" Is there a fix?

Lam Vuong

any eta? :D

Dixon

Castor gets stuck in "Installing Castor" and I've tried reinstalling, rebooting etc. It worked before so suddenly stopped. Any ideas whats going on?

Dixon

This means that the error "Temporarily unavailable"is due to that. In a next update would be great if we could manually provide the ISO instead of downloading from Microsoft.

Yarson

Alright, so I found out that Microsoft since the beginning of march has banned new sales of products in Russia, and made the download of windows 11 ISO more restrictive (I'm not in Russia but I get an error when I try to download the ISO from Microsoft official servers).

Yarson

"Temporarily unavailable" error here as well

Yarson

This is so frustrating. I get a temporarily unavailable message in the support files section when trying to create a castor pc. idk whats wrong. everything else is green

NEMESIS

same issue

NEMESIS

Hi there, just installed and setup Castor. Seems to be very easy to setup and start a VM. I did this on my sons PC as he as hardware to spare so my daughter can play on a handheld, Im running into an easy that I cant figure out thought. My son has all his games on his C drive and this drive I wanted to share to my daughter, using the above share technique the driver comes up as a network drive on the VM, everytime you run a .exe you get a promt this runs of network blabla.. and also had troubles getting epic games and steam games to show up as installed and not require to redownload again on VM. Am I missing a step here? Is there perhaps a way to share the hardrive @locally? if that makes sense? some games dont run, some comes up with a promt and no steam or epic games shows up as installed. Also seem to be unable to install directx which is required by many games in our library. Any help here is appreciated. Tried redoing VM twice..

Dixon

When I try using the Castor Wizard the "Support Files" section shows "Temporarily unavailable". This prevents me from creating the VM and using the software. Does anyone know of a fix?

James

You can change the RAM and CPU cores in the Hyper-V application. GPU I don't know.

Michael J

Hello, Is there a button prompt that lets you boot into the Android on RG353 when the Linux card is in? Holding the F does not work for me.

Minitabandus

Hey sorry another question to anyone here, is there a way to use Parsec with Castor? I know it's focused on moonlight / sunshine, but if it can also use Parsec, it would be awesome. Also a few feature that I think would be great for my use case : - ability to auto start a Castor PC - ability to change resources after (CPU cores, RAM, GPU)

Danke Alamien

SOLVED: My dumbass thought enabling Hyper-V through the wizard would be enough. Turns out I had to manually enable SVM Mode for my AMD 5950x in BIOS. After that, the machine popped up in Hyper-V and the installation went through despite the File Explorer errors mentioned below! Hey! Tried to install a couple times on Win 11 Pro latest build, but I keep getting error messages to the tune of "Location is not available/ N:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect." After a while, the wizard ends with "Something went wrong!". Any pointers please? :')

Simone

Hey, so I successfully installed Castor PC, but the performance is not that good. I only have 5600x and 6700xt, I set 4 cores, 16gb RAM, and about 30gb of SSD. A few question : - any tips on how to improve performance with my spec? - any way to change the cores, ram etc after I created Castor PC? Thanks, this is awesome btw, so many possibilities, and it's just the beginning!

Danke Alamien

Next week should please the 353 crowd.

Black-Seraph

You need to add a shortcut in the web administration interface and add the -gamepadui argument to it.

Black-Seraph

Maybe this is a dumb question but, how do you launch Steam, via moonlight, with the new UI?

Michael J

I did portfoward ALL ports on my router in the Moonlight guide, even checked if the ports are forwarded via canyouseeme.org (all success) but no luck so far. No idea what's wrong with my PC. I will check again during my next trip. Thanks for helping.

tanbarthez

Then something else must be off still because it works for my setup. Have you made sure to port forward ALL Moonlight ports on your router with that portshift?

Black-Seraph

I did try to do it though. Connect my Castor PC via 'my Internet IP address' with the port (Castor PC ID * 50)+47989 so I entered into Moonlight-qt 'my Internet IP address':48039 but get errors about connecting unsuccessful.

tanbarthez

You can but you need to shift the ports by (50 * Castor ID).

Black-Seraph

I kinda travel alot so I want to know if there is any way to connect Caster PC over the internet? I read the guide of Moonlight-qt that you can do it over internet but when i tried, I can't connect to Castor PC at all.

tanbarthez

No problem.

Black-Seraph

Nice! I'm excited. And no, I'm not on the twitter. I can only follow you here. ;)

Nicky Santoro

If you follow my Twitter you'll see that I am actively working on that one alongside a few other things. In general the whole 353 line is getting "the treatment" right now.

Black-Seraph

My RG353p is feeling a bit empty without Google services and the Black touch. Just wanted to randomly state that. ;)

Nicky Santoro

You can use Moonlight on your PC to administrate your Castor PC.

Black-Seraph

For some reason, the Castor PC install goes well. When I use Hyper-V Manager to view my Castor PC, I get a dot for a mouse cursor. I can't really click or do anything. My goal was to set up Steam using my computer, then stream to my Retroid Pocket 3. I'm on Windows 11 Home, and I'm quite new at using virtual machines.

KyleTheUltimate

I'm a pleb v1 switch owner. No OLED goodness for me (yet).

Black-Seraph

Just an update... since the latest release of castor and the ability to use OpenGL and Vulkan I gotta say the OLED switch is fantastic. Definitely an upgrade from my Odin.

DanCue

I've kinda given up on the new UI. My Odin works well with the general UI but I can't for the life of me get my gamepad to work in the games. But it's a beautiful UI! Looove Castor!

Megabyte

No problem mate. Just happy you figured it out.

Black-Seraph

Okay so I've created a new VM after the update for OpenGL and such and now I can't get the VM to respond to any inputs. I've tried connecting in Hyper-V but it's weird. I click the start button on Windows and it tries to hit the search button. I guess it "responds" but doesn't actually click. Any clue what I'm doing wrong lol. Edit: My dumb*ss set my iDRAC server up as the same Static IP address as my PC X-D Problem fixed when you don't do dumb things haha

Michael J

It's quite amazing isn't it? :)

Black-Seraph

Thought i'd mention that the new steam deck UI beta for windows is AMAZING with this setup. I'm streaming to a retroid pocket 3 with it and it's the closest ive ever had to getting a full hhandheld PC experience through a VM. There are still some quirks with getting gamepass games working, and the lack of a guide button on the pocket 3 is a huge pain. But once it's working it's borderline magic.

Lachlan Launt

Not at the moment, but I intend to add a location picker in the next version.

Black-Seraph

Hello, I subscribed just for this, was just wondering if there;s a way to install this onto a storage drive that isn't the OS drive? My boot drive is intentionally really small, so its kind of a problem for me.

ChelC Real

Dynamic memory isn't supported by paravirtualization anyway so don't worry too much about it. It's for regular VMs to request RAM on demand. And yes you can change the amount of assigned RAM at any time.

Black-Seraph

Random question for you. If I upgrade my GPU or Ram in the future is there a process we need to follow or should it just be plug and play? I was thinking about going up in RAM so I can possibly create more VMs in the future. Right now I have 32gb total of which 16 can be allocated to VMs. If I go up to 64 I could have 32 available to VMs. Also, in Hyper-V there is a dynamic memory setting. What is that for? Would that allow the VMs to use more than what is allocated as they need it?

DanCue

Pretty much exactly this. I figured that the release post was already long enough as is (with the sharing instructions etc) so I didn't want to bloat it more than I had to. I hope to trim that one down a bit by automating shares in the future but for now it is what it is.

Black-Seraph

For those of you that don't understand what this means... if you were going to use a VM for emulation before this update you would not be able to use certain emulators which meant certain platforms were just not possible to play. (Switch, PS3, etc.) I'm sure emulation wasn't the only thing being limited either. After this update your limitation is your GPU. If your GPU is capable of playing it you're good to go on the VM as well. Super exciting.

DanCue

I feel like this newest update 1.0.4 is flying under the radar. This is a huge update that provides passthrough OpenGL and Vulkan!! After scouring the internet for solutions to OpenGL in paravirtualization and giving up on it you come out with this update. haha Thanks for all your hard work Black-Seraph. I'm happy to say that this works beautifully.

DanCue

Yes they do.

Black-Seraph

Just saw the new update, wondering what was fixed with open GL and Vulkan? Do they now work? I just created a new pc late last night lol... ahhhh

Megabyte

The way paravirtualization works I think that advances in the OpenGL to DX12 wrapper are definitely the way to go. That way, at the end of the day, everything will run in DX12 which is the easiest to paravirtualize due to the fully working driver.

Black-Seraph

Yuzu requires 4.5, I think. Good to know about the PCIe passthrough. I'll just have to settle for moonlight with the host PC for those scenarios. The day OpenGL is fully supported in paravirtualization will be a day to celebrate.

DanCue

I'm sorry to say that PCIe passthrough is not as easy as you think it is, it requires a variety of hacks and not exactly user-friendly steps to get up and running. Castor really streamlined the process, making things as simple as possible (for the enduser) but it's in no way the norm. As for OpenGL, the best way to use it is to install Microsoft's own OpenGL to DX12 wrapper: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/opencl%E2%84%A2-and-opengl%C2%AE-compatibility-pack/9NQPSL29BFFF?hl=en-us&gl=us It only provides OpenGL 3.3 though.

Black-Seraph

Unfortunately, there's not a way until OpenGL is fully supported. Black-Seraph mentioned some wrappers that could be used but in my research I didn't see any that supported OpenGL versions greater than 3.3. I'm just using normal moonlight for now until there's a solution. Another method that could be used is dedicating a GPU to the VM, but of course that would cost money and its 1 GPU per VM plus the 1 for the Host. I'm not entirely sure how to set that up though but I may be interested in having one of my VMs with that. Is it as simple as just selecting that GPU during the setup process for Castor? IDK.

DanCue

Is there any way to access the VM via the usually Hyper-V "connect" option? I'm trying to access it to make some changes via a clone-zilla live iso but all I get is a black screen when I try to connect. NVM. It works all of the sudden lol. Not sure what changed haha.

Michael J

Yeah man that seems like a sick set up! I wouldn't mind having a jailbroken OLED switch too (I have an OG). To your last bit- Anyone have any tips/ideas on getting yuzu working with a VM? Everything I've seen says no because you cant pass the graphics driver through to the VM unless it's Linux. So I can connect the normal Moonlight way and run it but not through Castor. NBD but just thought I'd ask!

Jason Smart

That's actually what I'm working on. I have a modded OLED switch on the way. They have a moonlight-NX app that I can install or if I go the path of installing android on it I can use Pollux. So my set-up will be BigBox running on my PC with all of the emulators and everything being processed by my host and then streaming it to my Switch OLED. Honestly, I had an AYN Loki Max reserved but I canceled it to go the Switch route. There really isn't a need to have all that power locally on the handheld if I can just stream it and let my host PC at home do the work. Say what you will about the Switch and it's outdated internals, but it should have no trouble streaming and I love the freedom of the joy cons in my hand as I play. The screen is also beautiful with the 7" OLED. The Loki Max would have only been 6" and the Odin I currently have is only 6". BTW I'm currently using the Odin to stream my BigBox and it's very nice. I just wish OpenGL was possible on the VMs but for those emulators that require it I just log into the host instead on moonlight.

DanCue

That would be awesome! Black should do that.

Yonathan Asefaw

Impractical maybe but possible.

Black-Seraph

What would be hilarious (and ironic) is that if this is successful enough and if you had any interest you could have a Nintendo Switch app too for JB devices. Imagine ripping your games off your Switch, patch and mod them on PC, crank up the quality even at 720p (also meaning FPS), to then stream back to the Switch to bypass the oh so aging hardware. Not to say you couldn't stream it back at 1080p in docked mode either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Impractical maybe but a funny idea.

Jason Smart

No problem, any time!

Black-Seraph

Update worked flawlessly. Thanks for getting that put together so quickly!

DanCue

Sent

DanCue

Just slip me your Discord ID via DM so I can get in touch with you directly. I'll pass you a new build to test sometime later today.

Black-Seraph

Ok. I was tempted to start from scratch again but I resisted. It’s so much work with all I did to the VM. Let me know if you need to get access into it somehow. I’m on discord…I sent you a message yesterday.

DanCue

I have an idea what it might be. I'll keep you posted.

Black-Seraph

Just updated a driver on my 2060 and now the Castor VMs are not accessible. In Hyper-V it looks like they are each rebooting after about 45 seconds. Any ideas?

DanCue

Things move so fast nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if we were to see paravirtualization reach full on feature parity in a year or so.

Black-Seraph

Definitely will stick with Castor. Hopefully OpenGL will be supported soon. Until then I’ll have to stick to using my host pc for those that I can’t get around OpenGL.

DanCue

The iOS / iPad client doesn't support port-shifting / NAT and I don't own a Mac (yet) so I can't work out a NAT-patch for it (yet). For Android you can use my custom NAT-able Moonlight fork (Pollux), and Windows/Linux/Mac/Raspberry Pi users can use the QT version of Moonlight (as that one supports port-shifting by default). I am working on a PS Vita client at the moment as well.

Black-Seraph

Does this also work on iOS and iPadOS? I'm trying it on my phone and I can't add the VM IP manually for some reason.

DanCue

It is possible but hardware accelerated encoding on AMD cards is hit or miss (and completely absent on Intel ones). This means your Castor PC stream might end up software encoded which would lower it's visual quality, maximum resolution (720p is a realistic 60fps target here) and increase it's latency (still good enough for 60fps gameplay though). If you're willing to take this potential hit then yes, it can be done. You will have to create a new Castor PC though as the GPU assignment is linked to the created PC.

Black-Seraph

Right now im running a Ryzen 1600X and a GTX 1060 6GB And ive been using it and it works great but I was wondering if i were to upgrade to the Ryzen 5700G is it possible to use the integrated gpu on the virtual machine? im fine playing games at 720p with castor and the extra 2 cores are welcome.

AFKane

Quadro setups require volume licensed drivers. Given the high price of Quadro cards the only way a normal end-user will get their hands on one is in the used market, and even then you'll need to set up a volume license server and pay an annual fee to keep that one running. Last time I checked it was 99$ a year or so just to run the license server (don't quote me on this, the prices might be different now). It's definitely not a plug and play thing like Castor where you punch in a few numbers and press a button. It does support OpenGL & Vulkan though, which I'd expect at the price they are selling their cards though.

Black-Seraph

So an alternative is to get a quadro card? If I do that will it automatically pass through OpenGL or is there some configuring that needs to be done with Castor/Hyper-V?

DanCue

Pretty cool! I will try this in the near future for sure. Just need to upgrade my PC.

Yonathan Asefaw

It's how I and my wife play things together (1 work notebook plus 2 Castor PCs / handhelds). Works pretty damn good.

Black-Seraph

Just Subscribed to test this brilliant idea. I come from Retrogame Corps channel. If it works the half as good as it looks its a blowmind.

Paco

There's some old libraries you can download off of sourceforge that work okay for the most part in OpenGL 1~2, I've yet to find some good OpenGL 3 wrappers. They all work the same way though: You copy the DLLs into the game's installation directory.

Black-Seraph

please please... how can I do the translator to get OpenGL working?

DanCue

I'm not sure how you managed to get stuck in this situation but you should be able to delete the PC from Hyper-V Manager. Keep in mind though that Castor does a handful of extra steps as part of the deletion process so please only do this as a last resort.

Black-Seraph

I deleted a castor PC to remake a new one with more storage and ram but even though I deleted the first one it still appears in moonlight and I'm able to connect to it and use it. How do I delete it at this point if it doesn't appear under castor on my host PC?

AFKane

Castor combines a lot of technology into one easy to use bundle that gets us pretty damn close to what Quadro cards can do. I figure the OpenGL stuff can be fixed by adding a translator, but Vulkan is a whole different deal that will require Microsoft to update their VRD drivers. One way or another. I'm sure Castor will see several more updates that will improve it's compatibility and ease of use / robustness.

Black-Seraph

Dang, thanks for responding! Guess I’ll have to settle for using my host system for now. Thanks anyways!

Saf

Microsoft hasn't even started on Vulkan paravirtualization yet. As of today Direct X is fully done and OpenGL is in the works but unfinished.

Black-Seraph

And just saw the comment above mine and your response about OpenGL paravirtualization. Any chance Vulkan might work?

Saf

This is great stuff, perfect for my Odin Lite. I am curious if you or anyone else have gotten Yuzu to run on the Castor VM? I'm getting freezes with Vulkan and errors initializing with OpenGL on Castor. Host system runs it fine though. Intel i7-6700K RTX3080Ti

Saf

Interesting. I wouldn’t even know how to get started on this. Any helpful guides you’ve used to set this up?

DanCue

OpenGL paravirtualization is supported but in it's early stages. The better way to do it (at the moment) is to run a OpenGL to DX wrapper, but those are hit and miss. Paravirtualization is at it's best with DirectX 10, 11 & 12. DX9 works but works better when wrapped through DX9 to DX10+ wrappers.

Black-Seraph

When I try to use xemu it tells me the that OpenGL is not enabled. That emulator doesn't provide an option to switch. Is there any way to get OpenGL?

DanCue

Good tip.

Black-Seraph

I just wanted to throw this out there since I'm sure others will probably want to play emulators on this virtualization. I had an issue where an emulator would play a game on the host but not the VM. The solution was to change the graphics to Direct3D12. I suppose you could use 11 or 10, but 12 is working just fine for me.

DanCue

Sounds like a environment issue then. There's little I can do about those. All I can think of is that you check the usual suspects: Make sure your client is on 5GHz WiFi, your host PC wired and that your WiFi has enough uncrowded bandwidth to spare for whatever client settings you dial in.

Black-Seraph

Also the moonlight on-screen buttons does the same, spamming movement buttons so character moves weird.

Simo Heinonen

Mine work fine. 8bitdo SN30 Pro and Pro+ here. Keep in mind that a lot of stuff can influence latency. WiFi conditions, certain gamepads just being bad, certain Bluetooth chips, etc.

Black-Seraph

Hello, when using controller with Android device, the input is laggy / spams the buttons. Is there any fix for controllers?

Simo Heinonen

Would you mind sending me your Discord ID in a DM so I can get in touch? I have a good idea what could be the issue but I'd have to take a look.

Black-Seraph

hello. When I run "create Castor PC" I get "Something went wrong". Requirements are all OK. You can also download the Win11 ISO file in the ProgramaData\Castor folder. It has been confirmed that a new virtual machine can be created and started using Hyper-V Manager. I didn't see any errors in the event log. Where are Castor's logs created? There is too little information to solve this problem, so I asked Mr. Black-Seraph. Here are my PC specs: Win11 Pro Japanese version (upgrading from Win10) CPU Core i7-8700 MEM 32GB SSD 1TB (800GB free space) GPUGeForce GTX1080 NIC Realtek Wired LAN 1Gbps MB ASUStek PRIME Z370-P (3004 07/12/2021) Your performance deserves respect!

moto

So Black-Seraph just finished our issue session, and it looks like my VT-d / SVM option was disabled in the bios. After enabling that in my bios, it worked out for me

Kevin Nguyen

Have you checked your BIOS settings yet? Castor requires VT-d / SVM to be enabled.

Black-Seraph

Simo Heinonen

I'm not quite sure why this is happening to you It might be your windows locale. To be sure I would have to do a TeamViewer session with you though.

Black-Seraph

When I try to create a PC, it asks me to format the drive, to which i do, but then the castor pc creation fails. when i dont format the drive, it also fails. Any fix?

生きる ViViFY

Any fix to this problem? I'm getting the same issue

生きる ViViFY

Big players like Valve can't even trick their way past this... I'm sad to say I stand no chance at doing so either.

Black-Seraph

Ah that's a good idea! But err.. did you have any ideas about the following question I asked ooor? lol?

Huga Booga

Try some multiplayer games with loved ones. That's where it truly shines. :)

Black-Seraph

Hmm so I got this up and running and can stream games just fine (Deep Rock Galactic is awesome from the testing i've done!) However i'm running into a problem and wondering if anyone knows a solution... Specifically any games that are running Easy Anti Cheat I get a "Can't run in a virtual machine" message when I go to launch them. Any ideas if there is a workaround for this? Supposedly according to a reddit post someone said to set the information of their VM software to match their motherboard and bios info but i'm not sure if there is a way to do this with Castor.

Huga Booga

I just did this. For others who will try this.. The instructions say to use an IP address that starts with 172. The one provided in the instructions is for the host PC. You will need to find the IP address of your VM. I recommend using the following command in PowerShell to get all of your VM's IP addresses: Get-VM | Select-Object -ExpandProperty NetworkAdapters | Select-Object VMName,IPAddresses Worked like a charm.

DanCue

Ok. So it's just a matter of opening ports rather than running this tool. Thanks!

DanCue

Take the required ports for Moonlight and add (50 * Castor PC ID) to them. Those are the ports you need to port forward to your host PC on your router.

Black-Seraph

How would I access remotely? I installed (in the virtualization) the Internet hosting tool provided by moonlight. When I run it it says I need GeForce Experience so I downloaded that but that says I don't have an NVIDIA GPU. Any ideas? Am I going about it wrong? Is there a different way to access remotely?

DanCue

Gotcha. Ok. Hey man, thanks for all of your help. I know a lot of this could have been handled in private chat but hopefully someone who experiences the same challenges I have will stumble across this. Thanks for all of your effort on putting this together. It just seems like the next logical step for moonlighting into your system and I've waited for a while for a solution. This is perfect for what I have been wanting to accomplish.

DanCue

That's just a leftover from the automated Windows installation process and can be removed safely.

Black-Seraph

Reply. Thanks. I ended up starting from scratch all over and it works now. Not sure why the uptime was resetting like that on two fresh installs but I’m glad it worked out. Is there a reason why each virtualization creates a DVD drive? Is that required for something? I figured out a way to get rid of it in Hyper-V but I don’t want to mess anything up.

DanCue

When duplicating VMs you need to manually adjust ports and mess with the NAT adapter forward settings. I never said it was easy doing this, just possible. I might write a guide on how to duplicate machines in the future, or make it a dedicated feature in a future revision.

Black-Seraph

And now I can't connect on a Mac anymore. I used ports 48189 and 48239 for IDs 4 and 5, respectively. Connecting on Android worked with IDs 4 and 5. Edit: Android isn't connecting either. Bummer. Edit2: I noticed the uptime in Hyper-V for each virtualization gets to around 30 seconds and then resets to 0. Edit3: Anyone who stumbles across this just know that the resetting issue is due to updating your gpu driver. It happened to me again later (see my newer post) and it is being worked on by Black-Seraph. Follow that post for updates.

DanCue

I ended up just deleting the virtualizations and uninstalling Castor to start all over. It works now. Not sure what was happening but I'm glad it's working now. One thing I'd like to know though is that the new virtualizations in the system tray have a number next to the name that is not 1. I would have that that would have been reset once I uninstalled Castor. Anyway I can fix that?

DanCue

I tried creating another virtualization and it worked. I was able to pair just fine. I decided to delete though because I wanted to try and duplicate the existing one instead. Ultimately, I decided to go back to creating a fresh install because duplicating was giving me too many issues. So I created a new virtualization and it successfully installed but now polluk (moonlight) won't see the new virtualization. It still only sees the very first one I created. Any ideas?

DanCue

No problem. Thanks for giving me the time of the day!

Black-Seraph

*applauds* Thanks for the shoutout and I love to help debug etc! Again, THANK you for this!

Megabyte

Mind sending me your Discord handle in a DM so we can look at this together later?

Black-Seraph

When I try to create a PC, it asks me to format the drive, to which i do, but then the castor pc creation fails. when i dont format the drive, it also fails

Kevin Nguyen

Glad it all worked out!

Black-Seraph

The 1.0.1.0 update worked. Pretty sure it was the auto-mount. Thanks Black-Seraph!

Nate DeVries

Excellent! That's awesome!

DanCue

You can change RAM allocations via the Hyper-V Manager (you'll find it in your start menu). There you can duplicate already existing machines as well.

Black-Seraph

I appreciate your help so far. Sorry to keep bothering you but could you answer my question about the ram allocation?

DanCue

Thanks, I may reach out next week.

Nate DeVries

You can share folders (or drives) in Castor and then access them from the host PC using their NAT IPs. It's essentially the "how to share drives" tutorial section but swap the Host & Castor PC sides & IP addresses.

Black-Seraph

love the idea and before i try it i have one question. Can i add files and folders to the "castor host" emulated pc file system while using my normal desktop? can i for instance access the "castor pc" files so i can add a picture folder as an example by using windows explorer on my regular desktop...? or is the castor pc like a big closed off image file (like most V.M.s)

superpoeper

I'm off my dayjob tomorrow. I'll drop you a message on Discord.

Black-Seraph

Let me know when you have a moment. I can work around when you are available.

Omid Ensafi

Yeah. SMB. Just glad it's working one of these ways for me. Thanks

DanCue

Is there anyway to change the ram of an already created Castor PC or do I need to delete and redo? I'd like to know before I go installing software and such. Would be nice to adjust after the fact in case I'd like to add more instances in the future. Also, Is there a way to duplicate an instance. Say I want another Castor PC set up the same exact way I've set up another. Rather than repeating all of these steps (downloading apps, installing, etc.) can I just duplicate it?

DanCue

SMB share I suppose? I've seen that before. Sometimes IPs work, sometimes hostnames do, sometimes both and sometimes neither. To this day I don't know why.

Black-Seraph

I was able to connect using the IP address. Using the name would not work. Not sure if this is related to Castor in any way but I'm assuming it is because my host PC connects using name and it will also detect it in the Network.

DanCue

I'll have to google how to do that. I've never pinged my NAS before. Edit: Ping was successful. I must be logging in with incorrect credentials.

DanCue

Try pinging your NAS for starters. Still the easiest way to see if the network works right.

Black-Seraph

Ok. I'll try again. I wasn't able to do it like I normally would for some reason but maybe I did something wrong. Thanks

DanCue

You should be able to access it like you normally would. Castor automatically NATs your virtual PCs to the outside world (including your NAS shares).

Black-Seraph

I've got a different question. I want to connect a network drive. The Host PC connects to this network drive currently, so it is not a local drive. I think the directions provided above is for connecting to a Host PCs local drive. How can I connect to a network drive? (It's an Unraid drive if that matters.)

DanCue

No problem. Keep me posted.

Black-Seraph

Ok. I'll give that a try later. Ran out of time but thank you for the effort you put into this. Been looking for something like this for a very long time!

DanCue

Damn you're fast. I couldn't even edit my answer in time.

Black-Seraph

I did. I wouldn't have been able to install the first instance without that enabled. I have one up and running right now. The second one is the one giving me issues.

DanCue

Sounds like you need to enable VT-d / SVM in your PC's BIOS first. Edit: Scratch that, it's the 2nd PC that gives you trouble, right? If so you might have assigned too much RAM. All of your Castors + the host must not exceed the available RAM.

Black-Seraph

Excellent. Unfortunately, I attempted to do it and I got the "Something Went Wrong" error. Is it because I allocated all of the cpu cores to the first Castor PC?

DanCue

That's odd then. Having either enabled should be enough. Feel free to get in touch via Discord, we can take a closer look together then.

Black-Seraph

Yes you can. That's more or less the point of Castor in the first place. Both you and your son can play at the same time and on top of that you can use your PC itself as well.

Black-Seraph

If I want to be able to play on two different devices at once, let's say I have an Odin handheld and my son has his android phone. Can I "Create Castor PC" twice and have them running both at once?

DanCue

VT-d is for Intel, SVM is for AMD I ran into the same error message and turned SVM on in the bios. After doing that it worked like a charm.

DanCue

Running an AlderLake i9 on an ASUS mobo. Looking through the BIOS and there's only one option regarding VT-d (Enable or Disable)

Nate DeVries

Yep. VT-d is supported and enabled.

Nate DeVries

Check your BIOS and make sure VT-d or SVM are enabled. If they aren't you will get a "Something went wrong." error message.

Black-Seraph

I'm not able to create a host PC. Upgraded from Win 11 Home to Pro and all the requirements pass. but I get the 'Something went wrong' message. I'll get the pop ups when the temp drives are made, but it fails at the end.

Nate DeVries

I can't speak for everyone but mine work fine. They are in use daily actually because the missus has a Core Keeper addiction.

Black-Seraph

I'm not sure if this is my PC causing this or not - I can start the Castor PC the first time and have no issues, but if I try to start it a second time - or sometimes randomly - my whole entire system will freeze (event viewer last said something due to the nvidia driver - not the last time though :\) Was wondering if someone else has had this issue or not.

Photoncody

Thanks ever so much for solving my issue Black-Seraph!

Ollie Stratton

Of course.

Black-Seraph

Hey Black-Seraph you hero! I'm having issues installing, am I ok to DM you on discord? Thanks dude, i messaged you on patreon too just in case

Ollie Stratton

Hyper-V paravirtualization (one of the components used by Castor) doesn't support Vulkan yet.

Black-Seraph

this program has made most of my dreams come true! thank you! i have a question: when running certain emulators (cemu, yuzu) it doesnt recognize a graphics device, where it does on the host pc. games wont run, usually says something about vulkan. do you know anything about this?

Thomas Atkinson

It depends on the game TBH. Some do and some don't.

Black-Seraph

will sharing the host pc's drive make it so the resolution and graphics settings per game are shared or will they be independent of each other. i would prefer not to have to chjange the resolution each time i switch between tablet and pc, so which ever method allows me to do so i will do. awesome program btw!

Thomas Atkinson

No rush. I'm sure we'll find a time that works for us both.

Black-Seraph

I'm not sure when you have time, but I'd greatly appreciate the assistance! I'm DiMo#9710 on Discord. I will be away from my machine until tomorrow though.

Omid Ensafi

This could be a permission related issue on the Host PC side, but to be absolutely sure I'd have to take a look at your setup via TeamViewer first. Right now it's a hunch at best.

Black-Seraph

There's a physical limit to the shared buffers used to enable hybrid GPU support. This is why the upper limit is somewhere around 2304000 pixels times 2 (because of double buffering). The accessing device's aspect ratio is then calculated against the available pixel budget (for a lack of better terms) to give you the best possible aspect ratio accurate resolution.

Black-Seraph

This is so cool and the instructions have worked nearly 100% so far, but I'm getting tripped up just shy of being ready to go because the resolutions that I'm being offered in the VM are not the ones I'm putting into sunshine. The desktop is all sorts of weird non-standard resolutions like 1996 by whatever. I can't get 1440p even though that's what I've put in sunshine. Am I missing something really dumb?

Charles A

I've been using this and love it. Though, I just went through the process of sharing my host PC drive with my Castor PC, and something goes wrong when it's time to actually run the games through Steam. The Castor PC sees this network drive just fine and is able to read and write to it. The Steam library from the Host PC is on an non OS (doesn't contain windows on it) internal HDD, and Steam on the Castor PC sees all the games I have once I made the Host PC shared drives Steam application folder the default library. But once it's time to execute the games through normal Steam or Big Picture mode the game fails to load. Some games have their own bug reporting error popups and some just flash the screen and turn black and return to Steam. In some instances it mentions that "Your video card driver does not support any of the supported OpenGL versions. Please update your drivers or if you have a very old or integrated GPU upgrade it." - From launching the game Ex-Zodiac. When I install locally to the Castor PC Steam library, the games run fine from the small list that I've tried. I've done reboots and whatnot to see if it would shake off any sort of permission issue, but same result still. One game for instance is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge. I did first install it on the Castor PC, uninstall it, and then downloaded it again to the Host PC library. (For full transparency) I think this is an outstanding release, and this is more of a bug report/issue report than anything. I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong though and any help would be appreciated. Thanks! I think what you are doing here is amazing and it gets around SO many issues I've been having with Moonlight/Sunshine. Especially with an ultrawide monitor that always streams games with the super wide aspect incorrectly on my normal wide screen devices (phones/tvs/odin pro). I'm on Windows 11 Pro. Version: 22H2 OS Build: 22622.601 GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti

Omid Ensafi

One can just move the hard drive file to another physical location and adjust the VM settings if necessary.

Black-Seraph

Technically you could go into Hyper-V and add another hard drive or cut and paste the the main hard drive somewhere else and re-link it in Hyper-V. That being said, Black Seraph has said that they are working on it, so if you want no tinkering. Probably best to wait for the update.

Photoncody

I replied to your DM already but for completion's sake I'll post it here as well: If you are already inside your Castor VM then that means your GPU is working. Sounds like a game specific issue TBH, maybe try another game first to verify.

Black-Seraph

Nvidia 1070 Castor virtual pc does not show gpu in task manager and steam games do not find the gpu also. I see it in device manager tho in Castor Virtual machine. Not sure what the issue is. Any suggestions?

Leonidas (Jason L)

For some reason the virtual switch I was using was the problem, changing it to the default one fixed the issue, thanks for the help =)

Jorge Fernandez

That's odd. Mind getting in touch via Discord one of these days so we can take a look?

Black-Seraph

A second network adapter should work fine though. I'll give this a try myself and see where it takes me. Thanks for the report.

Black-Seraph

chris laitscj

No problem. Anytime!

Black-Seraph

Thanks again for all the help Black-Seraph! Hey everyone! He's awesome! So let's all give him a round of applause for his great effn work!

Megabyte

Using some NAT forwards and ALVR it should. But to do so you will have to punch in a few PowerShell commands.

Black-Seraph

Long long shot Would this work on a oculus quest 2 headset to stream rift games on pc

needlegun

Hey, really nice program. Quick question, I have my games stored on a NAS that is only accessible on my Lan, it seems adding a second network adapter to the VM breaks moonlight. is there a way add another network adapter without affecting Moonlight, or another way to map this NAS to the VM that you can think of? Thanks in advance!

Jorge Fernandez

Same boat as Ori, mate. I shot you a message on discord too

Bradley Duggan

Sent you a messagee :D

Ori Galili

You can find me on the Retro Handhelds Discord server you can message me from there. https://discord.gg/RetroHandhelds

Black-Seraph

Hey for sure! How do I get access to the dis?

Ori Galili

Mind getting in touch via Discord so we can take a look at your issue together? Something went wrong errors usually mean driver issues of some sort and those I have to look at personally. :(

Black-Seraph

I keep getting something went wrong sadly :(

Ori Galili

There is. The feature will come in a future release. It's currently being beta-tested by the wife. :)

Black-Seraph

Also here because of Russ. It's always been pretty frustrating to cast using Moonlight, because of all the resolution changes that happens. Plus, not being able to use my computer. Glad someone was building a solution for that. Thank you! EDIT: Is there a way to use hard-drive space that is not the one the OS is installed on?

Huy To

I messaged you on Discord. Just nudge me when you find the time.

Black-Seraph

Yeah sure! Thanks man, my id is megadrive#0695

Megabyte

Looks good enough on paper for me. Would it be okay to get in touch with you on Discord say we can take a look together?

Black-Seraph

Sure it's an AMD 3700x with 2x8 16gb of corsair vengeance LPX 3200mhz ram, RX 580 4gb video card. Windows 10 pro. Several SD and mechanical drives. I tried changing some install specs but I still get the same problem.

Megabyte

Mind sharing your system specifications?

Black-Seraph

My only suggestion is to allow us to install it on other drives and not the primary one, I got like 129gigs free on my primary but my other drives have terabytes free.. But there is a problem, and I dunno what it is, I tried to install, got the source files, and got a window saying "something went wrong" I did it twice. Any ideas what could be wrong?

Megabyte

Castor implements internal NAT-ing to support multiple virtual hosts per physical host. This requires a patch / change in the Moonlight source code to work. The attached Pollux.apk includes this patch, I'm still preparing QT & embedded builds with this patch (which is what you need to run this on Linux). The source code for the Android version patch can be found on the linked GitHub page. Once the QT & embedded versions are patched I'll make sure to update this post and the GitHub page.

Black-Seraph

If my handheld have Moonlight pre-installed, would it work even on linux-based OSs like jelOS or ArkOS?

Baron

Oh great! Thank you, I'm giving it a try now. Success! My pc meets all requirements.

Megabyte

No, this works on any card. :D

Black-Seraph

Russ brought me here, just now, now a patron! Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Darn, I should have read up, Nvidia only huh? Damn...

Megabyte