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HoloPlay Core

The HoloPlay Core SDK unlocks the ability to integrate your existing 3D software with Looking Glass displays, making the Looking Glass a holographic second monitor.

The SDK comes in two different flavors:

  • Native dynamic libraries for Windows, Mac, and Linux
  • JavaScript for web or Node development

Check out how Schrödinger used the HoloPlay Core SDK to improve their workflow.

schrodinger_1

The HoloPlay Core SDK is a closed beta. To apply, click here.

Prerequisites

Developers can use any rendering backend (DirectX, OpenGL, Metal, Vulkan) and any windowing library (e.g. GLFW, Qt, SDL). Beyond that, in order to render to the Looking Glass display, your application must be able to:

  • Generate a borderless fullscreen window at a specific position
  • Distort the camera's projection matrix
  • Render multiple views to a texture
  • Apply a shader to the texture

Also, your end user must have HoloPlay Service installed on their machine.

Note: JavaScript developers can use HoloPlay.js to rely on our three.js integration to handle the above.

How It Works

The HoloPlay Core SDK provides your application all the information it needs to draw to the Looking Glass, including window information and calibration.

Why Window Information is Important

Operating systems see connected Looking Glass devices as HDMI monitors. Your application must know how the OS sees the monitor so that it knows where to draw the windows.

Why Calibration Data is Important

Each Looking Glass has its own device-specific calibration, read over USB. Your application must know this calibration data in order to render holograms properly on the Looking Glass.

All Together

HoloPlay Core (the graphics library integrated into your application) gets this information by providing an API endpoint to request information from HoloPlay Service (a persistent driver-like service that is installed on the user’s machine). HoloPlay Core uses this information to draw your 3D scene to the Looking Glass.

Guides

These reference documents cover some of the underlying logic inside the SDK:

An example OpenGL project is distributed as part of the HoloPlay Core SDK to demonstrate how to move the camera and render to a texture in the appropriate format.

To learn more about the Looking Glass and how it works, click here.

Questions

Email us at [email protected] if you have any further questions about how you can integrate HoloPlay Core into your software.