Rainway opens up it’s doors for Q&A
Rainway has been in open beta for just over a month. During that time, they’ve gone from being largely unplayable to becoming much more refined. Most of their bugs have been solved, and it’s time to look to the future. Rainway hosted a Q&A on Reddit to talk about what’s to come.
No News about Support for Nintendo Switch
We’ll go ahead and get this one out of the way. The most asked questions during the Q&A had to do with the Nintendo Switch. Rainway’s fans are very eager to try out the service on Nintendo’s popular Handheld. The developers made it clear early on that they don’t have any news to share about the Switch at this time. Now this doesn’t mean that Rainway won’t be on the Switch at some point. It just means that Rainway wasn’t ready to share that news today.
Availability on non-Computer Platforms
Rainway’s reputation is largely based on it’s promises to become available on many non-traditional devices. When we look at the world of Game Streaming, it’s largely limited to computers and Android devices. Rainway promises to take that a step further. During the Q&A, Rainway announced that Android is the next device to receive full Rainway support. The plan right now is to release a version of Rainway on Android in the near future. Initially it will be available in beta to all Rainway users. If you want to access the beta, all you’ll need is a Rainway account and an Android device. Rainway plans to support all standard Android game controllers in their App (CEO Andrew said that he personally uses an Xbox One S Controller).
Andrew confirmed that the Android version of Rainway will be compatible with Android-powered Smart TV’s. They also haven’t eliminated the possibility of adding Rainway to non-Android Smart TV’s.
In addition to supporting Android, Rainway also confirmed that they plan to fully support MacOS and Linux at some point in the future.
On an interesting note, Rainway also stated that they have plans to support VR Streaming in the future. That’s all we know for now on that subject. They didn’t add any additional details about how that support would be implemented or about which VR devices would be targeted.
Networking Updates
Rainway is a network-dependent platform. Many of their enhancements over the past weeks have been networking-related. While they have improved their streaming system significantly, some Rainway users are still concerned about receiving support for ISP Gateway’s that don’t allow port forwarding.
Rainway has been listening to this feedback, and they recently added IPv6 support to their service. They also added the ability for Rainway to fall back on a different access port if the standard 443 port is tied up. During the Q&A, Rainway users pointed out that this may not be enough. Some people have found that both port 443 and the fallback port are inaccessible.
Andrew addressed these concerns, and talked about how Rainway’s technology operates. Their primary connection method is P2P. If that fails, they fallback to a more direct connection method. Rainway is able to automatically forward ports for you and create host entries that manage your IP information. They are considering implementing a routing service that will funnel traffic to address fringe cases of non-connectivity. In English, that means that Rainway is investigating methods that will allow any remaining users that can’t connect remotely to have a means of playing outside of their home.
Additional Game Detection Support
Rainway uses a game-detection engine called “Mist” to discover games on your computer. Any games that are found can be streamed to another device through Rainway. Rainway currently supports Steam, GOG, Blizzard, and Origin Games. During the Q&A, Rainway announced that they plan to add support for Epic Games and the Twitch Game Launcher on 02/25/18. This will enable games like Fortnite to be playable through Rainway.
Playing with your Friends
You might already be familiar with other Game Streaming services that allow you to share games with your friends. During the Q&A, Rainway was asked whether a feature like this might be coming to their product. Andrew confirmed that playing with friends is a planned feature, and that it’s coming soon. In Rainway’s version of Game-Sharing, your friend will only need a device with a web browser to play with you instantly. In this system, you can invite a friend to join you in your game, and they can basically become player 2 for games that support local or splitscreen multiplayer.
Official Release
It would be fair to say that Gamers are excited about Rainway and are eager to see it officially released. Rainway was asked if there is currently a time-frame for launch. They confirmed that they are hoping to have Rainway officially released by the end of the year (the end of 2018).
Hopefully your questions about Rainway were answered in this article. Is there anything that you are wondering about Rainway that wasn’t addressed here? Let us know in the comments!
Originally published at Flickstiq.
