Getting started
From a packaged Unreal Engine build to a browser session on one machine, then to a first cloud instance, with the terminology the rest of the site relies on.
Pixel Streaming runs an Unreal Engine application on a machine with a capable GPU, encodes its rendered frames as video, and sends them to a web browser over WebRTC while browser input travels back over the same connection. Three parts are always involved: the packaged application (the streamer), a signalling server that introduces the streamer and the browser to each other, and the player page that runs in the browser. Epic publishes the reference signalling server, SFU and frontend libraries in the PixelStreamingInfrastructure repository on GitHub, with a branch per engine version.
This hub covers the shortest path to a working session and the terms used across the site. It applies to the original Pixel Streaming plugin and to Pixel Streaming 2, which Epic introduced in Unreal Engine 5.5 and which works with the same infrastructure. Where a step differs between the two plugins, the article says so.
Explanations
How and why a part of the system works.
- Explanation
Why AEC and configurator studios stream Unreal instead of optimising it, and when it doesn't pay off
Games optimise for weak hardware; AEC and configurator studios ship heavy BIM and CAD scenes to a few stakeholders on a deadline. When pixel streaming is cheaper than optimising, and when it isn't.