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Beta. For development and testing only. Test Locally streams from your machine, not from Streampixel’s GPU fleet. Nothing here reaches end users. When you are ready to go live, upload a build.
Test Locally lets you see your project through the real Streampixel player while it is still running on your own PC. There are two ways to use it, and they behave differently:

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Before you start

  • The Pixel Streaming plugin must be enabled in your project. It already is if you have shipped a build to Streampixel.
  • Your PC needs outbound access to dev-streamer.streampixel.io on port 8888. If a corporate firewall blocks it, the session never connects.

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Start a dev session

  1. Open your project in the dashboard and go to Test Locally.
  2. Click Start dev session.
  3. The new row expands with three things:
    • Launch argument, for a Standalone Game or a packaged build. There is a switch for PS1 and PS2; pick the one that matches the Pixel Streaming version your build uses (see below).
    • Signalling server URL, for streaming the editor.
    • Preview link, a private page that shows your stream.
A session lives for 2 hours. Once it expires the row says so and you start a new one; the old launch argument stops working. You can also Revoke a session early from its row.
The launch argument contains a token that identifies your session. Treat it like a password: do not commit it or paste it into a shared channel. A fresh session mints a fresh token.

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Option 1: stream the editor

  1. Copy the Signalling server URL from the session row.
  2. In Unreal, open the Pixel Streaming toolbar menu and paste it into Signalling Server URL.
  3. Choose Stream Level Editor.
  4. Open the preview link. The session row flips to Connected and the editor viewport appears in the player.
This streams whatever the editor is showing. It needs no launch arguments and no restart, so it is the fastest way to look at something.

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Option 2: Standalone Game

This is the one to use when you want to know what your users will see, because the process is launched the same way Streampixel’s workers launch it.
  1. Copy the Launch argument from the session row. Make sure the PS1/PS2 switch matches your build.
  2. In Unreal, open Edit → Editor Preferences → Level Editor → Play.
  3. Paste it into Additional Launch Parameters.
  4. From the Play dropdown next to the Play button, choose Standalone Game.

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What happens next

  • Unreal starts a separate game process with those parameters. It does not use Play In Editor, so the selected-viewport and new-window modes will not stream; only Standalone Game does.
  • No game window opens on your machine. The launch argument includes -RenderOffScreen, which renders to memory the same way a Streampixel worker does. This is expected, not a failure.
  • The process connects to Streampixel’s dev streamer with your session token. The session row flips to Connected.
  • Open the preview link. You see and control the game in the browser, through the production player, with your project’s settings applied: codec, bitrate range, quality range, and a 1920 × 1080 starting resolution that the player’s resolution selector can still change.
  • The preview link goes through the same access rules as your live stream. If the project is password-protected or gated behind SSO, the preview asks for that too.
To iterate, change something, stop the game, and run Standalone Game again. The preview reconnects on its own.

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Packaged builds

The same launch argument works on the command line of a packaged Windows build:

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PS1 or PS2?

Unreal renamed the Pixel Streaming plugin’s encoder settings in 5.5. The two versions read different flags, so the dashboard offers both forms of the launch argument. Choosing the wrong one means the flags are ignored and the encoder runs on defaults.

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Troubleshooting