Steam Integration
Via hooks into Steam's frontend and backend through good faith reverse engineering.
The client maintains an authenticated session with Steam servers just like the official client does.
Our servers sit in front of Steam's content servers to provide high performance. After our servers have
cached and rebuilt the content, Steam's servers are completely out of the picture.
After logging in, your Steam library will be virtualized on the "V:\" drive. If your games aren't showing
up in Steam, you may have to manually add this drive to your library like you would any other drive.
If certain games aren't showing up, or are showing as "Update Required", you can try clearing your download
cache in Steam. This is under Settings > Downloads > Clear Cache. If this doesn't work, you can also try
logging out of Via and relogging in.
Sometimes games may fail to start and Steam will put up an error. If this ever happens, you'll likely need
to restart Steam as it will be stuck. When stuck they'll fail to start other games that would otherwise be fine.
Game Compatibility
Via aspires to be completely compatible with the native Windows file system, NTFS. This means games work out
of the box with no added support from us or the developers. This doesn't mean all games run fast, though.
Many games aren't built well enough to be robust to our more extreme bandwidth and latency requirements.
Something like 90% run well on low ping, and something like 20% run well on high ping.
Low Overhead, High Performance
Unlike cloud gaming services, Via streams the game assets and content that you'd normally download up front.
This means the game runs completely locally with no input latency or degraded image quality due to video compression.
You can play at a full 4k 240hz if you want.
Via is also fast and uses very little memory and CPU. You can run Via on low powered machines and not expect
it to slow your game down. In fact, it is even faster than the native Windows file system.
Local Cache
To avoid constantly redownloading game content, Via lets you configure storage space for it to use as a cache.
Most games need something like 1-5 gigs to get in game the first time, and over time will stream something like
1-10 gigs an hour. If you are playing large games we recommend something like 10-100 gigs of cache space.
Via has advanced caching algorithms that learn from your access patterns. If you frequently play a game, it will
make sure to keep that content hot in the cache so you can play it fast. You can also allocate storage across
multiple drives if you have some space free here and there. Via will pool the storage and balance the content
across them. On top of this, you can also assign storage allocations to one of two tiers. The main use case for this
is to have slower but larger hard drive allocations on tier 2, and small but fast solid state drive allocations on tier 1.
Via will automatically move content between the tiers based on your access patterns.
Local Peer to Peer
Via will find other PC's on your local network that are also running Via.
This lets Via only download a piece of content once over the internet and share it with the rest of your roommates or family.
This is fast and runs at 2.5 Gbit/s with ~1% CPU usage.
Server Side Prediction
Via servers are constantly being trained by players so they can learn what content is frequently accessed together.
This lets us deliver good performance even on poorly made games that would otherwise struggle on ping.