Today we are going to explain how to install and configure Sunshine, our Streaming Gaming Server from our PC to any Android or Windows device.
Thanks to this server, we can play powerful AAA games on any other hardware compatible with Moonlight, the open-source client installed on many systems. Thanks to Sunshine in a few steps we can put all the power of our desktop Gaming PC on an Android Smartphone, retro console, mini PC, Android TV or Tablet. The performance will depend on the network we use.
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What is Sunshine?
Sunshine is a game-oriented streaming server for Moonlight. It offers low latency, cloud game server capabilities with support for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs with hardware encoding. Software encoding is also available. You can connect to Sunshine from any Moonlight client on a variety of devices. We have a web user interface to allow configuration and client pairing from your web browser.
Hardware requirements for Sunshine
The minimum requirements for Sunshine are very low as we can see, this if we want to play in 1080p quality without HDR. If we want to play in 4K HDR quality we will need more hardware, especially modern hardware with modern hardware video codecs.
- GPU: AMD HD7XXX / Intel HD Graphics / Nvidia GT7XX
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 3-5 / Intel Core i3-i5
- RAM: 4 / 8 GB or more
- OS: Windows / macOS / Linux
- Network Server: 5GHz, 802.11ac / Cat5e Ethernet
- Client Network: 5GHz, 802.11ac / Ethernet Cat5e
- For HDR or 120fps streaming, we require modern hardware with HVEC Main 10 codec support.
Install and Configure Sunshine Server
The process to install Sunshine as a server is very simple, you only need to download the executable for your system, either on Windows or Linux.
Install Sunshine server
Steps to follow to install the Sunshine server in our PC.
- Download Sunshine Server (Click on“Show all assets“)
- Run the installer and follow the steps.
- On Windows in the warning window > Show details > Install anyway
- From the new Sunshine icon in the taskbar click on Open
- It will open a web browser, click on Advanced Settings
- In this screen, we will enter the user and password we want to use
- The server will be ready to use, and we can access via WebUI from the icon in the bottom bar.
Sunshine Configuration
From the Sunshine management WebUI we have several sections of settings.
- Home: Version information and documentation resources
- Pin: Where we will enter the PIN for pairing with other devices.
- Applications: Here we add the different accesses that we will see in the client. Desktop, Steam Big Picture or any game with direct access that we want to configure.
- Configuration: Settings for codecs, network access and language change, available in Spanish.
- Change Password: To change the password to access the WebUI.
- Troubleshotting: Solution of common problems.
- For more information, read the Official Documentation
Within the Configuration section is where we have all the settings in detail of the system. We can work with the default settings and everything will work without issues.
- General: Language change and simultaneous WebUI accesses.
- Input: Xbox / PS4 virtual controller emulation modes.
- Audio/Video: Resolution / fps and broadcast quality settings.
- Network: Network settings to access from local network or via internet to the server (if it does not connect, open those ports if necessary in Windows/Linux)
- Config files: Where the settings are stored.
- Encoders: Codec quality details for our hardware.
Pairing Sunshine and Moonlight
If we want to connect to our Sunshine server from a Moonlight client, the process is very simple, it only requires us to enter a PIN.
- Connect to the same local network as your PC or configure remote access via the Internet.
- In the Moonlight client, click on the icon of our networked PC.
- Enter the generated PIN
- Enter the Sunshine WebUI and enter the PIN in the configuration tab.
- After entering the PIN in our Moonlight client we will see the applications configured to connect, by default Desktop that shows the desktop of the PC and Steam Big Picture.
- From Applications, we can add the shortcut we want.
