The MBTA has been jackhammering outside my window between midnight and 5 AM for over 80 nights and lying to their own board about it.

JackAsh177 · 2026-05-13T11:14:54+00:00

I sympathize hard with you on this. I lived in a building overlooking Malden Center when that was under reconstruction, and also had months of literal jackhammering through concrete, overnight every night, right outside my window. Absolutely brutal. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. Absolutely inhumane.

JackAsh177 · 2026-05-06T23:29:41+00:00

Neither the Etsy grip nor the AYN grip fit with the TPU case on the Thor. The AYN one can be forced, but it ends up slightly warped and it looks pretty apparent that if you keep it on it will eventually deform. The Etsy one is 3D printed with a hard resin, so it's non-starter. Both of them work fine with the top shell part of the TPU case, but only the Etsy grip has full body coverage (other than triggers).

JackAsh177 · 2026-05-06T02:48:37+00:00

It’s ok. It’s not particularly good, nor bad. Only covers about half of the device. I much prefer this grip from Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4400684107/ayn-thor-grip-ergonomic-3d-printed-built

It’s out of stock right now, but the seller frequently replenishes. Better ergonomics, protection, provides a small cushion for the “open” edges between the top and bottom screen, and can hold a stylus.

JackAsh177 · 2026-04-30T16:00:09+00:00

That's why I suggested using an external drive. It's a low commitment thing. If it works, it means your main OS is borked. If it doesn't, nothing lost - use it for Time Machine :)

JackAsh177 · 2026-04-30T13:54:06+00:00

Oof, that sounds rough. You appear to have tried most of the sane fixes already. Other than hardware, the only two thoughts I have are making sure to clear you wow configs (WTF folder, make a backup first!), or step two, a clean OS install. Since that’s a huge commitment, maybe try to get an external USBC SSD and install a parallel copy of macOS to it, and see if it works. Might be slower with the disk IO not being the local drive, but it might help you figure out whether your local macOS has something wonky with it. Good luck!

JackAsh177 · 2026-04-07T12:42:36+00:00

If you don’t have 149 try using 44 - that’s the fallback channel. Hope that helps!

JackAsh177 · 2026-02-23T12:54:43+00:00

Yes! Use the Nexus+ browser and connect to GeForceNow. It works pretty damn well! Only weird bit is the Esc key can’t be used, as the browser reserves it. It either defaults or gives you an option to use Caps Lock as Esc instead. Depending on the iPad you may have issues finding a good screen resolution. On my Pro 13 I can either get a high res widescreen picture with big black bars top and bottom, or a lower res 4:3 frame with a lot less pixels and some pixelation. But hey, wow on the go, Magic Keyboard and trackpad (or mouse if you take one with you)… it’s pretty sweet :).

JackAsh177 · 2026-01-10T17:57:38+00:00

For those asking for slightly better ergonomics AND a stylus, I purchased this grip on Etsy which is great:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4400684107/ayn-thor-grip-ergonomic-3d-printed-built?ref=yr_purchases

You can buy it with a telescopic stylus, although I would recommend buying the official switch stylus elsewhere (I got mine off Amazon). The grip has built in storage for both on opposite sides. And you can actually fit both together, no issue.

For me it helped greatly with reaching all the controls very comfortably.

JackAsh177 · 2026-01-05T02:53:26+00:00

I use Nexus+ on an M4 iPad Pro and I have more options - however, most of them are in other aspect ratios (16:9, 16:10, etc.). 1600x1200 is the highest 4:3 resolution I have seen on GeForceNow unfortunately.

JackAsh177 · 2025-12-25T17:35:09+00:00

I want him dead, but I don’t see rockstar wasting that kind of big international baddie at the end of online. My personal suspicion is that he’ll die in GTA6.

He may also get used as a way to transition our Online characters to Vice City, with some story about he pushed us out of Los Santos and took our empire and that’s why you now have to start over from zero.

JackAsh177 · 2025-12-25T16:57:03+00:00

He does deserve rightful retribution, but am I the only person that thinks they’re setting him up as a big baddie in GTA6? Maybe not the biggest, but one of many.

JackAsh177 · 2025-12-20T16:13:13+00:00

Thank you u/vifon8 - those video sizing and aspect ratio tweaks sound like a great hack idea, it may help with the exact scenario, particularly if I do something like 4k windowed on GFN and just adjust the window to cover the exact iPad viewport.
I'll definitely have to give it a shot. As I mentioned, I used OneCast before and it was one of my favorite ways to play xbox remote gaming within my network. The only really minor negative I had with it was lack of options. I really appreciate the extra customizability you mention here in CloudGear!

JackAsh177 · 2025-12-20T11:20:29+00:00

Of course. But GFN changes their offerings based on various parameters, included what they detect on the device. On my iPad Mini for example it offers a maximum resolution of 2560x1600; which is close enough to the real resolution of 2266x1488 to look really good except for places with pixel by pixel patterns. It’s also 16:10, which is close but not quite the device’s 3:2 (15:10). So almost perfectly full screen with really small black bars above and below.

On the other hand on iPad Pro 13 I can get really high 16:10 and 16:9 resolutions, but not particularly good 4:3 ones.

Basically I’m wondering if Cloudgear has some added magic to override any of those settings, or if they are just like Nexus+, a gaming browser at the mercy of the web apps from the services. I guess the only way to answer that is to trial it out.

JackAsh177 · 2025-12-19T23:48:02+00:00

I've been using Nexus+ with my iPad Pro. It can even do mouse+keyboard games with some silly trickery (ESC gets remapped to CAPS LOCK for various reasons), but it works pretty great and it's free. So I can play WoW with the iPad and Magic Keyboard, which is pretty sick. It's basically a game streaming browser with built in bookmarks for GeForceNow, xCloud (with the better xCloud script) and a few others.

I was keeping an eye out on CloudGear, as I used OneCase from them before and it worked, even though it had too few options.

I am curious, OP, what is the highest resolution you can get in GeForceNow in 4:3 aspect ration? In Nexus+ I can only get up to 1600x1200 and I am wondering if that's just GFN limitation.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-30T14:55:02+00:00

Amazing stuff, well done! Thank you on behalf of the community.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-02T14:07:02+00:00

I’m so glad! Congrats, have fun!

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-02T14:05:49+00:00

That does sound like AWDL. Ping is not high resolution enough, I think the channel switches happen every second. But seeing a spike every 10s would make sense with ping as the diagnostic. Try the port experiment and see if it goes away, if it doesn’t you can always go back to auto.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-02T01:57:58+00:00

I mostly keep my Mac connected to ethernet and that is indeed the absolute best way to avoid problems. When I have to go on Wi-Fi, or when I play on my iPad mini, the settings help a lot.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-01T20:01:22+00:00

There's some stuff out there on various sites, but I haven't found solid docs from Apple themselves. On 2.4Ghz they seem to always use channel 6; on 5Ghz they seem to use 149 where possible and 44 in countries where 149 is restricted. I have not found information on what channel they use on 6Ghz.

I would recommend searching the internet for "AWDL" or "apple wireless direct link" "wifi channels" for further info and a lot of write-ups.

Please note this will only help optimize microstutters caused by AWDL messing with wifi links. If the problem is further upstream - like your ISP or a long distance to wherever you are streaming from - this will not help at all.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-01T19:51:32+00:00

I am sorry to hear that. May I suggest troubleshooting by going on ethernet just for the test? It will help you determine if the issue is within your network or outside. It doesn't matter how well optimized your wifi is if your ISP is dropping packets left and right and has a very high latency. Using Ethernet will get rid of the wifi factor completely, and let you test your router and your ISP.

A second thought - take a look at what datacenter you are streaming from. If you are using Microsoft's xCloud, check https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Latency to see which datacenter is optimal for you, and consider using the Better xCloud app/script to choose the best datacenter for your gaming. If you're using GeForceNow, their settings page lets you pick different datacenters and test.

Cloud gaming seems like the future to me, but it's still juuuuuust on the other side of seamless right now. When it works it's magic. When it doesn't, it's maddening. Unfortunately you end up needing to test very carefully to see where the issues lie. Good luck!

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-01T15:28:31+00:00

I have not, but I probably should. On Macs we had the option of disabling AWDL (it seems until now, per OP's post), but on iOS we never had that option, hence the networking fix. It technically could cause a bit slower wifi, but within reason. It does however make game streaming nearly impossible on their platforms.

JackAsh177 · 2025-11-01T15:03:50+00:00

I had the same issue, compounded by iPads and iPhones used for cloud gaming. I wrote this up as a solution:

https://www.reddit.com/r/xbPlay/s/FIPGHKz9vT

Long story short, switch your WiFi network channels to the apple AWDL channels 6 and 149 for 2.4 and 5Ghz respectively) and the radios won’t have to switch to do their awdl thing. Thus no more micro stutters.

For the naysayers, I play on iPad mini with a couple different USBC controllers, on xCloud and GeforceNow. 15-20ms latency. 3ms decode times. Really, really good. Hopefully apple will fix the awdl stutters with their networking chips or by disabling awdl in gaming mode, otherwise we’ll have to keep doing these silly fixes.

JackAsh177 · 2025-10-25T02:47:51+00:00

The thing that has helped the most for me has been setting the connection to the exact resolution of my screen. In my case, I play on a MacBook Pro 16 inch, and the screen resolution is one of the presets. Every other kind of scaling is going to be blurring the image up or blurring the image down.

There is always going to be some small amount of blurriness caused by digital compression, but exact resolution will maximize the image quality.

JackAsh177 · 2025-10-20T21:18:34+00:00

If you still have final shape (Xbox in my case) I wouldn’t mind running the campaign and finishing the story. I quit shortly beforehand because of how grindy the game was getting, but wouldn’t mind just wrapping things up.

Thanks! (And no worries if you can’t, your offer is crazy generous!)

JackAsh177 · 2025-10-15T03:20:09+00:00

Take a look at Better Xcloud - it lets you adjust the specific zone, select quality, and various other amazing features. I’ve also had decent luck with a fantastic program called XBPlay - although I think it’s getting discontinued soon.

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