topic Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible in Stadia on Chrome

Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but now it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:00:28 GMT

I just can't work it out, nothing in my network has changed or on my PC. However, the last few weeks stadia has become unplayable, I just can't work out what is wrong. It works perfectly fine in 4K on my CCU. I have a 500Mbps connection.

I have a Nvidia 1660 super with VP9 decoding and have been enjoying stadia in 4k on chrome for months just fine, now it's just a pixilated mess. I often get told that I can't even launch a game because my connection isn't good enough.

I've tried all the troubleshooting on stadia support page and have a wired network, I couldn't work out the opening ports part of my firewall so I just turned it off completely to test, it didn't help.

Everything else works fine on my PC too, I can download games at a constant speed, I even did a clean install of windows!

Something somewhere on my PC must have updated but I just can't find it!

Anyone got any suggestions?

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

RXShorty — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 21:57:36 GMT

Hi @GamingPreferred,

So you don't have any issues using the Chromecast Ultra?

You are using a wired internet connection with your pc?

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:02:23 GMT

hi @RXShorty

Yep, no issues on CCU and everything is wired including my PC. I've tried different cables too.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

RXShorty — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:05:51 GMT

@GamingPreferred that is strange.

Did you try a different browser like Chrome Canary? Just use it for Stadia and nothing else. So no plugins or logged in with your account within the browser itself.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:08:15 GMT

I've tried canary and Edge, no extensions at all and tried incognito mode too!

I just don't know what else to try, especially as I've always had such a good service from Stadia on my PC.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

RXShorty — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:17:47 GMT

Well than it has to be something with the network.

So it could be your LAN network driver. If it is on you let motherboard, check if there is a new driver or even a new BIOS.

Or it has to do with your router/modem? You did a restart these already?

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

ViviFFIX — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 07:33:23 GMT

Have you checked your Stadia settings are still set to 4k (assuming you're a Pro subcriber)?

Also, it might be that for some reason you're using the wrong codec. It's an unofficial workaround but there's an extension called Stadia Enhanced which allows you to force a codec to be used.

Try downloading it onto Chrome Canary or Edge and then forcing VP9 and 4K through the extension (or 1080p if you're not a Pro sub) and see if that improves things.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:01:03 GMT

Yeah I'm a pro subscriber and have tried lowering the quality to 1080, it's the same blurry mess.

I been doing some troubleshooting with stadia on twitter and now I've filled a form in for more support. What I have noticed is my partners laptop is the same, it has been a while since they used their laptop for stadia as they always use the CCU and it's just as unstable, wired or wifi, both the same.

*Edit* my partner pointed out they never shut down their laptop so after a reboot it worked perfectly.

I really don't think its a network issue as everything else is fine. Clearly there is something on stadia or within my own network that does not like me playing on chrome. My friends in Spain has the same issues when Stadia first came out they could play on CCU but not their PC, it's so weird.

Opening ports didn't help, but to be honest I'm uneasy about doing that for security reasons.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

ViviFFIX — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 09:59:08 GMT

Sorry, for clarification, is everything ok now after a reboot?

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 10:30:14 GMT

Sorry! I meant rebooting the laptop fixed the issues there. However playing on my PC is still inconsistent.

For example I started playing this morning, it kept going blurry and pixelated, stadia + network monitoring shows there was no packet loss.

I exited the game and launched it again and played for an hour with no issues, not a single dropped frame, exited and relaunched again to test it and it was back to being blurry, I repeated that and then it worked fine again.

It feels like It's hit and miss on if I get a stable game or not.

I managed to find some performance monitoring tools on my PC and I can see every time it goes blurry there is a huge drop in network traffic, it usually sits around 45Mbps and plummets for a couple of seconds then shoots back up.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

ViviFFIX — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 10:44:35 GMT

I've had those similar issues. Last night in fact whilst playing Little Nightmares 2.

Usually it's network related (or at least in my case it is). I have bad days or even just bad sessions. Sometimes closing the game and reopening will find you a different route to Stadia that's more stable.

It's worth raising with your ISP as mine has finally confirmed a fault (well, capacity issue) and are fixing it currently. They're also giving me compensation for the poor service, but that's because it's a legal requirement for such compensation in the UK.

Re: Playing on chrome has been fine from day 1 but not it's terrible

GamingPreferred — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 10:53:29 GMT

Thanks @ViviFFIX never thought that it might be the way my ISP is routing traffic. I don't think it's a capacity issue as I can stream 2 x stadia at the same time on the CCU with no issues with 1x4k and 1x full HD.

Tried this morning had one of the worse sessions I've ever had I couldn't see anything it was so fuzzy then exited and restarted and played destiny 2 for a couple of hours with zero issues.

I really hope the problem just goes away, in the same way it appeared.

Played around with Geforce now too and had no issues with that on my PC.

There are so many variables on PCs!

Thanks again for help/suggestions.