Anyone here ever game in their car? I was thinking of maybe taking the occasional lunch hour (or half hour, more realistically), and do a bit of gaming in the car. I have been reading about these 150-300W power inverters but the general consensus is to hard wire them to the battery with a dedicated high amp line to avoid meltdowns in your cigarette lighter.
Ultimately I’d love to do a 19" LCD with my Xbox. Super backup plan is I guess . . . a Switch? But I’d love to Xbox One X it.
The Switch is your best option. Frankly, you don’t even have to leave your desk if you do that. It has the built in kickstand or you can purchase the HORI one. It also has probably the best selection of games built for thirty minute bursts of gameplay.
I like to bring mine along and play games in the Arcade Archives line or Sega’s Ages classics. If you pay for Switch Online, you could play NES or SNES games too, and of course any of the seemingly million indies that are available. Have a buddy you can share with? Hand them a JoyCon and you’re playing competitive or cooperative games over lunch. Want to play a bigger game like Super Mario Odyssey or Legend of Zelda? You can just suspend whenever you want.
It really depends what type of games you want to play.
I’ve been mulling over trying the Steam Link from anywhere app and buying a controller to link to my phone or tablet. My guess is that lag is not a big issue for me (though I don’t play FPS games).
But other issues are the $30 or so for a controller, and that I have no way to wake my PC from afar so would need to disable it going into sleep mode.
I actually tried this recently and had a pretty decent experience. I realized that I had a fairly nice Samsung Android tablet and recently remembered that you can get the Steamlink App for it. I downloaded the Steamlink App, linked up with my Steam installation on my PC, paired a spare Xbox One controller I had and it all worked pretty well. I test fired up Borderlands 2 and had that work reasonably well. The image isn’t as crisp as directly gaming on my PC of course and you get some lag or artifacting depending on the network infrastructure you are using and hardware constraints, but it is workable and a nice option.
That got me excited about similar options. I purchased an actual Physical Steam Link and Steam Controller devices years ago, but wasn’t really happy with them and they have been sitting in a closet collecting dust ever since. I pulled them back out and set everything back up again. I actually had a better experience this time and might use it from time to time to play a turn-based game on my TV or maybe stream a PC-only title when I want a larger screen.
I am still not completely wowed by streaming since it never looks as good as playing locally and directly, but I am trying to be more open minded and embracing Steam streaming in some cases even if it is an inferior experience. Though games like Stellaris, Age of Wonders Planetfall, Survivng Mars, etc. coming to the Xbox One is kind of negating some of the initial reasons for Streaming.
The third and best method I have tried is streaming from my home Steam installation to a Steam install I have on a computer at work. I keep Steam installed at work (not to play games) but to redeem keys I purchase during sales and such. I recently noticed that I had tons of ‘Installed’ games on my work machine even though I don’t install games there. Those are all the games I have installed at home and I tested it out by streaming one to my work PC. That worked the best of all the streaming options I have tried, not perfect, but still very good. That is really a great feature offered by Steam for those that want to install Steam on additional yet underpowered hardware such as laptops or non-gaming machines.
A lot of this may not help for in-car gaming but some of the options are worth checking out for other scenarios.
I remember the days when you could only have one active Steam installation running and signing into one location would sign out others. Now the platform is much more forgiving and open.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of my Steam Link for in-home use. Mainly because I have a nice TV and stereo in the basement away from ears and my desktop PC requires me to use headphones. Witcher 3, Subnautica, action games are all great and lag-free. Or put another way, I don’t do online FPS multi-player where the lag might be a factor. Steam controller I like and use, but also have a PS3 controller for my Steam Link for some games.
I guess I should try linking my Gamesir PC game controller to my Android phone? Or do I need a dedicated unit? On-screen controls are only suitable for the most basic games. I also have iPads and a FireHD but the latter is not the best tablet.
I go on a work trip or hotel vacation a few times a year and always wish I set something up before going.
totally expected this to be about teslas, which have a mame emulator built in, and also unity coming soon (with cuphead included). Mine is slightly too old for the unity stuff, but has breakout, missile command, lunar lander. I have been known to play lunar lander whilst alone in the car waiting for someone. Controlling it with the steering wheel is pretty strange.
Oh my God, steering wheel as an input device! That sounds like the plot to a 21st century terrorist attack. Hackers break in and make your steering wheel control a videogame instead of the axle.
