enricobuehler
f1e7ec3535
The support matrix said the desktop clients' Full chroma switch "has no effect today" and that only the Apple client asks for 4:4:4. Both stopped being true in July: `clients/session/src/main.rs` advertises VIDEO_CAP_444 whenever the setting is on, deliberately with no client-side probe, because every desktop decode rung can display full chroma — the Vulkan presenter samples the 2-plane 4:4:4 pool formats and swscale converts for the software rung. So Linux, Windows and Apple all ask; Android is the one that genuinely doesn't implement it. The other half was HDR. `9f72a3b6` gave the Windows IDD-push capturer a packed 10-bit BT.2020 PQ RGB output, so NVENC encodes HEVC Main 4:4:4 10 and the two compose — the matrix still said "4:4:4 and HDR together is refused", and hdr.md still called PyroWave the only exception. Linux is the side that keeps the trade: handshake.rs resolves the depth back to 8 for a 4:4:4 session, so full chroma wins and the stream is SDR. Three cells move ❌ → ⚠️ rather than ✅ on purpose. The client half is unconditional, but the host half is not: HEVC 4:4:4 means an NVIDIA host, or PyroWave on any vendor. The notes say which, and point at the stats overlay's `4:4:4→4:2:0` tag — this negotiation is the one that fails loudly. Also: C ABI version 13 → 14; PyroWave's ≈8K 4:4:4 block-index ceiling now has a note; and the roadmap no longer calls Intel 4:4:4 a hardware limit, which the matrix and vaapi.rs both contradict — VCN can't, VAAPI hasn't. Spot-checked and left alone as still accurate: the Linux client clipboard stub, VAAPI declining 4:4:4, Android having no 4:4:4 at all, and the wire / driver / gamepad-channel versions.
6.7 KiB
title, description
| title | description |
|---|---|
| Roadmap | Where Punktfunk is heading — the themes being worked on now, what comes after them, and what is deliberately not planned. |
This page is about intent, not inventory. It says what the project is pushing on and why, in themes rather than checkboxes, because a checklist of forty features is stale the week it is written.
Three other pages answer the questions people usually bring to a roadmap, and they answer them better:
- "Does it do X on my machine?" — the Support matrix. Every cell there was read out of the code that makes the decision. It is the arbiter: where this page and the matrix disagree, the matrix is right.
- "What changed recently?" — the release notes, per version.
- "How finished is this?" — How finished each part is.
Nothing on this page is shipped unless it says so. Recently shipped work — pen and stylus input,
mirroring one of the host's real monitors, a stream that ends when the game does, settings profiles
and punktfunk:// links, the punktfunk command line, HDR on gamescope hosts, and update checks
with one-click host updating — is described in the release notes for 0.19 through 0.22.3, and its
present-day behaviour is in the matrix.
Working on now
Windows host hardening. The Windows host is the newest large surface in the project and gets the most attention. Two strands: on-glass validation of the AMD (AMF) and Intel (QSV) encode paths, which are CI-green but far less exercised than NVENC; and capture-stall attribution — the host now carries dedicated instrumentation that says which link went quiet when a stream stutters — the content that stopped being drawn, or the display path that stopped presenting it — so field reports stop being guesswork.
Latency under load. The remaining wins are no longer in the encoder. They are in when a frame is handed to the display: client-side presentation phase control, keeping a decoded frame from waiting out a refresh interval it did not need to, and holding the frame rate when the link degrades rather than de-escalating and staying degraded. The next structural lever is sub-frame pipelining — overlapping encode and transmit inside a single frame via a direct slice path — which matters most at high resolutions.
Finishing the clipboard. Text crosses today from a Windows, macOS or Android client to a host whose operator turned the feature on, with images on the first two. Two pieces are genuinely unfinished: the Linux client's side of the bridge is a stub, so a Linux client offers and applies nothing; and file transfer has a wire format and a host-side policy but no client that offers files, so a copied file never crosses. See Clipboard.
Console parity with the apps. The web console still cannot run a speed test or set a bitrate — it shows the bitrate a live session is using and stops there, while the client apps can measure the link and act on the result.
Closing the unverified cells. The matrix's What is not verified list is a work list, not a disclaimer: a Hyprland virtual output on real display hardware, client-drawn cursors on sway/wlroots and Hyprland, gamescope headless capture on the proprietary NVIDIA driver, touch input from a Windows client. Most are settled by a single session log on the right machine.
Next
Reach beyond the LAN. Today a client and host have to be on the same network. The intent is NAT traversal (ICE/STUN/TURN) with a self-hostable relay for when no direct path can be punched, plus QUIC connection migration so a client roams between Wi-Fi and cellular without dropping the session. The control plane is already QUIC over UDP, so this is mostly signalling and relay rather than a protocol change.
A host that knows who is connecting. Two related pieces. Per-user sessions: a connecting client picks an identity — an Apple TV profile, say — which maps to a real account on the host, and that person lands in their own desktop, signed in, without touching the machine. And gamescope multi-user isolation: per-session input and audio, so concurrent clients are fully independent desktops rather than several views of one (the shared-desktop case already works).
The rest of remote work. Multi-monitor streaming (the host's several outputs as separate client windows), virtual-webcam redirection (the client's camera appears as a webcam on the host, so video calls run on the remote machine), and peer-approved pairing (approve a new device from an already-paired device's own app, rather than only from the web console). Each is a new side plane over the QUIC channel that already exists.
Picture and sound frontier. End-to-end variable refresh — the host rendering at a variable rate
and the client presenting with tearing control instead of a fixed cadence (the Apple client already
varies its own display link; the host half does not exist). True glass-to-glass latency measured
capture-to-present rather than capture-to-receipt. And object-based spatial audio: capturing game
audio objects on native Windows is blocked by a closed renderer API, but Proton already routes them
through Wine's ISpatialAudioClient, where the dynamic objects and their positions are currently
discarded — finishing that, and tunnelling objects plus positions to the client, would give
head-tracked remote spatial audio that no streaming stack does today.
Not planned, or blocked upstream
- HDR on Mutter, KWin and wlroots virtual displays. Those compositors' virtual-monitor screencasts are SDR-only upstream, through the GNOME 51 development branch. The host is ready the moment that changes. gamescope's virtual output and the GNOME 50+ real-monitor mirror are the two Linux routes that do carry HDR today — see HDR and the matrix.
- Hosting on macOS, iOS, tvOS or Android. Client-only platforms by construction: every host entry point fails at compile time. There is no setting that changes this.
- HEVC 4:4:4 on the AMD encode block. AMD's VCN never encodes 4:4:4, so there is nothing to implement. Intel is a different story and is a gap rather than a wall — the VAAPI backend simply has no 4:4:4 path yet, and it waits on hardware that advertises a HEVC 4:4:4 encode entrypoint to build and validate against. On either vendor, PyroWave already carries full chroma today.
- DualSense voice-coil haptics. Scoped and shelved — it rides the controller's USB audio interface and has near-zero game support on Linux. Rumble, adaptive triggers and the lightbar already work.