Sometimes in games, the picture freezes completely and there is only sound and I can control the character

[LibertyGM]

I use sunshine and moonlight on Arch Linux. Sometimes in games, the picture freezes completely and there is only sound and I can control the character (the picture on the screen remains frozen). The problem occurs in several games. It has been found recently in PUBG and Escape From Tarkov. Especially often in Escape From Tarkov. I load into the raid and the image freezes, but there are sounds, and if I press the keys, I hear the character moving.

sunshine here:
Windows 11
Processor: i7-10700k
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti

moonlight here:
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.9.0
Qt Version: 6.8.1
Kernel Version: 6.12.7-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 32 × Intel® Core™ i9-14900KF
Memory: 62.6 ГиБ of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: ASUS

[216598762]

Very similar setup here, same issue with Tarkov, most commonly during raid load but happens other times as well. It's a CPU heavy game so maybe it hitches and freezes, currently experiencing the issue on Hyprland. Only known fix is restarting the stream; stopping the desktop stream then restarting it, though it occasionally just happens again.

[216598762]

Ahh, additional info, tarkov is a rough one to optimize, however turning on 'Only use physical cores' will reduce the likelihood of this happening alot. Still an issue of the stream restarting itself when this does happen. Hard to tell if this is sunshine or moonlight.

[PaleNeutron]

Same issue here, with moonlight 6.1.0 and Sunshine v0.23.1 .

This happens with latest 3A game.

[kaorihinata]

This sounds like NVENC locking up due to high VRAM usage (not 100%, just "high enough" to cause instability) while using Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling. If you force disconnect using CTRL + ALT + Shift + Q, then try to reconnect again immediately, do you receive a 503 error code? If so then you should be able to reconnect again after that successfully, but it's not possible to avoid the NVENC lockup entirely unless:

A.) Nvidia fixes issue,
B.) you disable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling, or
C.) you change the Sunshine priority down to High instead of Realtime. This can be done in the web interface for Sunshine. See: https://docs.lizardbyte.dev/projects/sunshine/en/v2024.914.221909/md_docs_2configuration.html#nvenc_realtime_hags

There are other related bugs, and I think there used to be a pin about it.

[PaleNeutron]

@kaorihinata , yes, 503 error raised and sunshine will restart after that, leaving multiple icons in the system tray. Option C seems perfect.

What's the disadvantage if I set nvenc_realtime_hags to false?

[kaorihinata]

@PaleNeutron With games that push VRAM usage you’ll get deteriorating capture framerate as you approach max VRAM. It hits certain modern games harder (Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, etc) because they assume they’re the only ones that need VRAM. STALKER 2 is also somewhat sensitive, but it’s actually a little bit better at VRAM consumption (though it does leak a bit.)

The setting is in the web GUI as well on the NVENC configuration page.

[CHA-MinKyu]

@kaorihinata
Ah! That’s why I have the same issue… I’m using Moonlight to monitor my generative AI work.
As you know, most generative AIs tend to use VRAM to its maximum capacity. 😁