Google finally adds a search bar to Stadia, some big UI changes coming that look good

The reactions to that search bar announcement are just wonderful.
Everyone is making fun of them - and deservedly so.

It's like a Russian doll of funny.
A high-tech company not offering a search bar in their product for years now.
Perhaps because of so few games that it wasn't necessary at the start.
Apparently nobody in their team (or the decision makers, anyway) noticed this glaring oversight on a store page.
Their PR people seriously trying to celebrate the addition of a search bar as if such a feature couldn't be added by an intern in a day (two if it's supposed to be a good one).
All of this being baffling already, just gets turned up to 11 by the realization that the company is owned by Google.
Finally, turning it up to 12 and breaking the volume control, the project is Stadia, which just doesn't seem to take a breather.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 29 April 2021 at 8:48 am UTC

I'd be interesting in if anybody using Stadia on Linux does get a higher resolution than 720p without tweaks? Without tweaks I mean with stock Chrome/Chromium from either Google themselves (e.g. their installer and PPA if Debian/Ubuntu) or via Snap or whatever your Distribution offers. So no Chrome extension like Stadia enhanced, no special vdpau-va-driver package from Chromium Beta/Dev branch.

After complaining that I wasn't able to get 1080p anymore, Stadia replied and wanted to help to get this solved. Of course I had to go through all the possibilities their support asks for (e.g. restarting router, opening ports, using Google DNS, using "Install Stadia" standalone shortcut, using Chrome instead of Chromium, using Brave, enable the "Override software rendering list" flag, etc.). But so far nothing worked. Last statement now is, that their team is looking into this on Linux.

And this sounds to me like no one else told them it's not working on Linux ootb. Which can also mean, only I have this problem and it's working without issues for others. Even though Linux users are tinkerers, and when they get it working, maybe they think it's not worth mentioning anymore. As I do get 1080p with automatic setting on YouTube, Stadia should also be able to autodetect the resolution. Unfortunately they dodged my question about an explicit setting as e.g. Geforce Now offers for setting the resolution on the backend.

So, for those here using Stadia, do you have to use any tweak?

I have to use a tweak, e.g. the Stadia enhanced extension (none of the other extensions works for me anymore), and even here I have to click once through the settings before "native resolution" setting worked. Or I install the vdpau-va-driver (patched for nVidia, from the Chromium Beta/Dev PPA) and I get 1080p in Chrome via PPA or Chromium via PPA (but not in Chromium via Snap). I prefer the possibility to be able to force a setting, so I'm using now Stadia enhanced (thx Liam for the tip).

No matter what I do though, I cannot get hardware acceleration working, at least it never showed MojoDecoder on the chrome://media-internals page.

Quoting: CorbenAll that he wrote is another baby

I use it often. How can I tell exactly if it's doing what you want to see? It runs excellently for me on my HTPCs and main rig on Ubuntu Mate 20.04 on Brave Browser.

Quoting: RafiLinuxI use it often. How can I tell exactly if it's doing what you want to see? It runs excellently for me on my HTPCs and main rig on Ubuntu Mate 20.04 on Brave Browser.

I guess if you have a native resolution of 1080p or higher but Stadia sends you 720p it will look quite blurry. If it's sharp, it should be the native resolution. At least I could see it directly, if it was not 1080p.

Quoting: CorbenI guess if you have a native resolution of 1080p or higher but Stadia sends you 720p it will look quite blurry. If it's sharp, it should be the native resolution. At least I could see it directly, if it was not 1080p.

It's sharp on my end. I can download some of the clips I made and send them your way. I mostly play ZA4, MK11 and Super Bomberman R Online.

Stadia's getting a search bar? From Google? Naa, you're just having a laugh!

Quoting: CorbenI'd be interesting in if anybody using Stadia on Linux does get a higher resolution than 720p without tweaks? Without tweaks I mean with stock Chrome/Chromium from either Google themselves (e.g. their installer and PPA if Debian/Ubuntu) or via Snap or whatever your Distribution offers. So no Chrome extension like Stadia enhanced, no special vdpau-va-driver package from Chromium Beta/Dev branch.

After complaining that I wasn't able to get 1080p anymore, Stadia replied and wanted to help to get this solved. Of course I had to go through all the possibilities their support asks for (e.g. restarting router, opening ports, using Google DNS, using "Install Stadia" standalone shortcut, using Chrome instead of Chromium, using Brave, enable the "Override software rendering list" flag, etc.). But so far nothing worked. Last statement now is, that their team is looking into this on Linux.

And this sounds to me like no one else told them it's not working on Linux ootb. Which can also mean, only I have this problem and it's working without issues for others. Even though Linux users are tinkerers, and when they get it working, maybe they think it's not worth mentioning anymore. As I do get 1080p with automatic setting on YouTube, Stadia should also be able to autodetect the resolution. Unfortunately they dodged my question about an explicit setting as e.g. Geforce Now offers for setting the resolution on the backend.

So, for those here using Stadia, do you have to use any tweak?

I have to use a tweak, e.g. the Stadia enhanced extension (none of the other extensions works for me anymore), and even here I have to click once through the settings before "native resolution" setting worked. Or I install the vdpau-va-driver (patched for nVidia, from the Chromium Beta/Dev PPA) and I get 1080p in Chrome via PPA or Chromium via PPA (but not in Chromium via Snap). I prefer the possibility to be able to force a setting, so I'm using now Stadia enhanced (thx Liam for the tip).

No matter what I do though, I cannot get hardware acceleration working, at least it never showed MojoDecoder on the chrome://media-internals page.

Well, even on Windows it doesn't works perfectly ootb. There are less issues with getting the HW acceleration working, but people on Windows are equally resorting to extensions to get it to work as intended. Really, not much of an Linux only issue.
I would say that Stadia (whatever frontend is using) needs some streaming settings similar with GFN. Sure, what they want is to promote this ease of use concept "you just click and play" but clearly isn't working, at least for the moment.
For now, I'd say that adding the Stadia Enhanced is almost mandatory if you want the best experience. It does everything that Stadia should've done from the beginning, including the search bar :) and more.
I haven't bothered lately to see how a plain Chrome would work, but last time I tried HW decoding wasn't working.
I just use a Chromium with HW acceleration and Stadia Enhanced set to the desired res and codec. I don't need any extra steps before running and I do get the HW acceleration. BTW, you don't need chrome://media-internals to check it, the type of decoding used is listed right in the Stadia Enhanced HUD, use the small HUD if the big one is too intrusive.

Quoting: RafiLinuxIt's sharp on my end. I can download some of the clips I made and send them your way. I mostly play ZA4, MK11 and Super Bomberman R Online.

I'd just be interested in some of the details of your setup. E.g. what GPU/CPU do you use, and how is it connected to what kind of screen.

Quoting: dubigrasuWell, even on Windows it doesn't works perfectly ootb. There are less issues with getting the HW acceleration working, but people on Windows are equally resorting to extensions to get it to work as intended. Really, not much of an Linux only issue.
I would say that Stadia (whatever frontend is using) needs some streaming settings similar with GFN. Sure, what they want is to promote this ease of use concept "you just click and play" but clearly isn't working, at least for the moment.
For now, I'd say that adding the Stadia Enhanced is almost mandatory if you want the best experience. It does everything that Stadia should've done from the beginning, including the search bar :) and more.
I haven't bothered lately to see how a plain Chrome would work, but last time I tried HW decoding wasn't working.
I just use a Chromium with HW acceleration and Stadia Enhanced set to the desired res and codec. I don't need any extra steps before running and I do get the HW acceleration. BTW, you don't need chrome://media-internals to check it, the type of decoding used is listed right in the Stadia Enhanced HUD, use the small HUD if the big one is too intrusive.

Thanks for the info. So far I had seen no issues on Windows machines, and yes, I strongly agree that they need the possibility for the enduser to set those things. Auto-detection can always be an issue. Why not "hide" it under an advanced settings button?
I followed the instructions on this article to enable HW acceleration, but it didn't work for me.

Quoting: Corben

Quoting: RafiLinuxIt's sharp on my end. I can download some of the clips I made and send them your way. I mostly play ZA4, MK11 and Super Bomberman R Online.

I'd just be interested in some of the details of your setup. E.g. what GPU/CPU do you use, and how is it connected to what kind of screen.

Quoting: dubigrasuWell, even on Windows it doesn't works perfectly ootb. There are less issues with getting the HW acceleration working, but people on Windows are equally resorting to extensions to get it to work as intended. Really, not much of an Linux only issue.
I would say that Stadia (whatever frontend is using) needs some streaming settings similar with GFN. Sure, what they want is to promote this ease of use concept "you just click and play" but clearly isn't working, at least for the moment.
For now, I'd say that adding the Stadia Enhanced is almost mandatory if you want the best experience. It does everything that Stadia should've done from the beginning, including the search bar :) and more.
I haven't bothered lately to see how a plain Chrome would work, but last time I tried HW decoding wasn't working.
I just use a Chromium with HW acceleration and Stadia Enhanced set to the desired res and codec. I don't need any extra steps before running and I do get the HW acceleration. BTW, you don't need chrome://media-internals to check it, the type of decoding used is listed right in the Stadia Enhanced HUD, use the small HUD if the big one is too intrusive.

Thanks for the info. So far I had seen no issues on Windows machines, and yes, I strongly agree that they need the possibility for the enduser to set those things. Auto-detection can always be an issue. Why not "hide" it under an advanced settings button?
I followed the instructions on this article to enable HW acceleration, but it didn't work for me.

I haven't had issues on Windows either, but the complaints are frequent on Stadia community.
Don't know what to say about that article, it clearly states that HW acceleration was made available for Google Chrome 88 and newer, but I was never being able to make it work, while is a breeze on Chromium.
In the end, software or hardware decoding it doesn't matter that much as long as the decoding is done fast enough, and for me it takes about 2.5ms, which is quite good (the decoding speed is also listed by the Stadia Enhanced extension). Unfortunately the latency caused by the distance is around 28ms, which is not that good, but usable.
Another cause of latency is the browser itself, you can use:
https://basro.github.io/input-lag-measuring-tool/
or
https://www.vsynctester.com/
to check it.
An effective way to reduce the browser latency is to start Chromium with the --disable-frame-rate-limit argument, though it can raise considerable your CPU usage.

* 2019: Bestheda, an old publisher, congrats himself for adding PNJ in a game (Fallout76 - Wastelands)...
* 2021: Google (the king of search bar is'nt it ?), congrats himself for adding a searchbar in Stadia two years too late...
Ok, we are in this kind of world now.