Files
punktfunk/docs-site/content/docs/roadmap.md
T
enricobuehler dcde856178 feat(pad-audio): Linux hosts stream pad audio — the per-pad PipeWire sink (WP3)
The 0xD1 plane was Windows-host-only: host_cap() answered false and spawn()
was a stub everywhere else, so an Android tier-A client against a Linux host
negotiated the cap off and stayed on wire rumble. The whole downstream
machinery (framer, silence gate, lanes, 0xD1 send) was already capture-
agnostic — only the capturer was WASAPI.

- audio/linux/pad_sink.rs: one Audio/Sink stream node per DualSense-family
  pad, minted with the identity the matchers read (ALSA-style node.name with
  the pad's pairing MAC, description "Wireless Controller", bus/vendor/
  product/form-factor proplist, per-pad serial), 4-ch F32 48 kHz FL FR RL RR,
  no default-sink claim, priority.session 50. The process() callback IS the
  capture. PUNKTFUNK_PAD_SINK_NAME/_DESC override the strings for field
  debugging ({pad}/{mac} expand).
- native/pad_audio.rs: the shared logic and lanes compile on Linux;
  pad_audio_thread is generic over the capturer (open-with-backoff kept);
  host_cap() Linux arm = client asked + PUNKTFUNK_PAD_AUDIO + a reachable
  PipeWire socket; spawn() Linux arm mints the sink lazily in the streamer
  thread. spawn() gains an edge flag (Edge identity; ignored on Windows).
- devtest pad-sink-test: mint one sink and capture from it, no client — the
  WP3 on-glass gate. Verified on a Bazzite 44 host: identity served through
  pipewire-pulse, rear-pair (voice-coil) tone captured bit-exact over both
  the native and pulse legs.
- docs: PUNKTFUNK_PAD_AUDIO{,_SLOTS} are no longer (Windows); the roadmap
  non-goal narrows to Bluetooth client pads.

Gates (fedora:44 container, natively on the .41 box): cargo build --release
--locked (nvenc+vulkan-encode), clippy --all-targets -D warnings, cargo test
pad_audio+pad_sink 11/11, cargo fmt.
2026-08-12 18:53:35 +02:00

6.9 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 over Bluetooth client pads. The controller exposes no audio interface over Bluetooth, so the audio-haptics plane is USB-only on the client side — a BT DualSense keeps classic rumble. (Hosts stream pad audio on both Windows and Linux; rumble, adaptive triggers and the lightbar work everywhere regardless.)