Looking Glass Documentation
Buy Looking GlassDiscord
  • Looking Glass User Guide
  • NEW! ✨Looking Glass Go✨
  • Displays
    • 🔮Looking Glass Go
      • ⚡Get Started with Looking Glass Go
      • 📱Using the Go Mobile App
      • 🔆Liteforms™
      • 🖥️Standalone and Desktop Modes
      • 🔌Power and LED States
      • 🪄Default Playlist
      • ⏭️What's Next?
      • 👜Accessories
      • ⚙️Advanced Playlist Creation
      • ⚙️Manual Firmware Update
      • ❓Common Troubleshooting Issues
    • 🔮Looking Glass 16" Light Field Displays
      • 🪄Looking Glass 16" Light Field Display (Landscape)
      • 🪄Looking Glass 16" Light Field Display (Portrait)
      • ❓Common Troubleshooting Issues
    • 🔮Looking Glass 32" Light Field Displays
      • 🪄Looking Glass 32" Light Field Display (Landscape)
      • 🪄Looking Glass 32" Light Field Display (Portrait)
      • ❓Common Troubleshooting Issues
    • 🔮Looking Glass 65" Light Field Display
    • 🔮Looking Glass Portrait
      • ⚡Get Started with Looking Glass Portrait
      • 🎇Demo Holograms
      • ❓Common Troubleshooting Issues
  • Software Tools
    • 📚Overview
    • 🌉Looking Glass Bridge
      • ✨Using Looking Glass Bridge
      • 🪟Display Settings on Windows
      • 🍎Display Settings on macOS
      • 🐧Display Settings on Linux
      • 👷Troubleshooting
    • 📽️Looking Glass Studio
      • 📚Using Looking Glass Studio
      • RGB-D Photo / Video
      • Quilt Images / Video
      • iPhone Portrait Photos
      • Android Depth Photos
        • Samsung Portrait Mode
      • Light Field Photosets
      • Exporting Holograms
      • Troubleshooting
    • 🧊Looking Glass Blocks
      • ✨Convert any image into a hologram
      • ⬆️Uploading, editing and sharing Quilts
      • 🥽Viewing your holograms on different platforms
    • 🎬Hologram Video
    • 🔆Liteforms™
      • 🪟Get Started on Windows
      • 🍎Get Started on MacOS
      • 🧙Making Custom Liteforms
      • 🏪Configure Liteforms for Kiosk Setup
    • 👀Looking Glass Model Viewer
    • 🧪Experiments
      • 📽️Media Encoder
      • ⏩Looking Glass Media Encoder
  • Key Concepts
    • 🔑Hologram 101
      • 🎉Making great holograms
      • 🌎Holograms in the real world
      • 👾Holograms, but virtual
    • 🔍How does Looking Glass Work?
    • 📸Virtual Camera
    • 🧊3D Design Guidelines
      • Lighting
      • Post-Processing
      • Scene Composition
      • Materials & Textures
      • Performance
    • 💡Quilts
      • 🎬Quilt Video Encoding
    • 💡Light Fields
      • ⚡Linear Light Field Capture
    • 📽️Filming a Looking Glass
  • Creator Tools
    • 🎨Overview
    • 🔌Unity
      • ⚡Using Unity with Looking Glass
      • Setting up your Development Environment
      • Example Scenes
      • Prefabs
        • Hologram Camera
        • 3D Cursor
        • Dual Monitor Application
      • Script Reference
        • HologramCamera.cs
        • LKGDisplaySystem.cs
        • QuiltCapture.cs
        • Cursor3D.cs
        • OrbitControls.cs
        • BlockUploader.cs
        • MobileDMAController.cs
        • iOS Sample Scene Scripts
          • ChangeInteractionModality.cs
          • XYSlider.cs
          • XYSpotlight.cs
          • AudioRotateControl.cs
          • ModelController.cs
          • DemoIOSUIController.cs
          • PageHandler.cs
          • PageConnectHandler.cs
          • PageCalibrateHandler.cs
          • PageTestHandler.cs
          • DynamicAlcove.cs
      • Package Integrations
        • Built-in Render Pipeline Post-Processing
      • Developing for iOS
      • Depth of Field and Other Post-Processing Effects
      • Quilt Video Audio and Playback
      • Developing for Ultraleap Hand Tracking on Looking Glass
      • Looking Glass Pro (Legacy)
      • Additional Support
      • Change Log
    • 🍹Blender
    • 🔌Unreal Engine
      • 🗒️Change Log and Old Versions
      • 💽Installing the Unreal Engine plugin
      • 🎥Using the Unreal Engine Plugin
        • Using the HoloPlay Capture
        • Exporting Quilt Images and Video with Sequencer
      • Accessing HoloPlay Data with Blueprint Scripting
      • Packaging the Project
      • Unreal Engine 4 (Legacy Support)
        • Unreal Engine 4 Quick Start
          • Using the HoloPlay Capture
          • Exporting Quilt Images and Video with Sequencer
    • 🌐WebXR
      • 🔶PlayCanvas
      • 3️⃣3️⃣ Three.JS
      • ⚛️React-Three-Fiber
      • 🌈Spline
  • Tutorials
    • 📱Running Looking Glass Displays with iOS Devices
    • Ⓜ️Capturing Light Fields in Maya
    • 🧑‍🔬Using ShaderToy with Looking Glass
    • 🎨Sculpting with Adobe Medium and Looking Glass
    • 🔍Turn Videogames Holographic with Refract
    • 🖐️Building with Leap Motion
  • Developer Docs
    • ⚙️Looking Glass Bridge SDK
      • 🪛Web Application Integration
      • 🔌Integrating Native Applications
      • 📓Native Function Reference
    • 🐦Looking Glass Core Migration Guide
  • Third Party Software
    • 🗡️3D Slicer
    • 🔬VTK (Visualization Toolkit)
    • 🗺️ParaView
    • 🔩Community Made Tools & Projects
  • Legacy Software
    • 📡3D Model Importer
      • 3D Model Importer App Guide
      • 3D Model Importer App Reference
    • 🎭Diorama
      • Change Log
    • 🎞️Depth Recorder
    • 📸Lightfield Photo App
    • 🍍Looking Glass Core Overview
    • 🍽️Looking Glass Core SDK
      • C API Overview
        • HoloPlayCore.h
          • State Functions
          • General-Query-Functions
          • Device-Query-Functions
        • libHoloPlayCore.h
        • HoloPlayShaders.h
    • 🔰Looking Glass Core JS
      • API
        • HoloPlayCore.Client
        • HoloPlayCore.Message
        • HoloPlay Service Related
        • examples
  • Legacy Hardware
    • 🔻Looking Glass 8.9"
    • 🔻Looking Glass 15.6"
    • 🔻Looking Glass 8K
    • 🔻Looking Glass 16"
    • 🔻Looking Glass 32"
    • 🔻Looking Glass Pro
  • 💬Contact Us
  • 🛠️FAQ & Troubleshooting
Powered by GitBook

Follow us

  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
On this page
  • How Does it Work?
  • System Requirements
  • Usage
  • Configuration
  • Improving Performance
  • Questions

Was this helpful?

  1. Tutorials

Turn Videogames Holographic with Refract

Refract & Reglass are developed by Jared Bienz

PreviousSculpting with Adobe Medium and Looking GlassNextBuilding with Leap Motion

Last updated 9 months ago

Was this helpful?

Refract provides real-time holographic streaming for . When combined with , Refract allows you to play more than 500 commercial games as moving holograms.

How Does it Work?

This works great for screenshots and video captures, but it doesn’t allow you to actually play games on your Portrait. That’s where Refract comes in.

Refract uses the color and depth information from ReGlass to dynamically generate a holographic scene with multiple camera angles. The holographic scene is then rendered on the Portrait in real-time.

System Requirements

As you can imagine, Refract works best on high-end systems. Refract is essentially a second game running at the same time as the one you’re playing. But I have taken steps to support as many systems as possible and several settings can be adjusted. I’ve included a whole section on improving performance below.

Here are some rough estimates:

  • Nvidia 3080 can run modern games like Cyberpunk at close to 60 FPS without sacrificing hologram quality. Though you’ll want to turn off Ray Tracing and lower the resolution.

  • Nvidia 1080 can probably handle classic games like Portal 2 close to 60 FPS without sacrificing hologram quality.

Usage

  1. (Optional) create a shortcut to Refract.exe on your Start Menu or Task Bar.

  2. Launch your game and enable ReGlass.

  3. Launch Refract.exe and Enjoy!

Configuration

Refract includes a menu that runs directly on the Portrait! To bring up the menu, press the bottom hardware button on the side of the Portrait.

While the menu is open, the top buttons cycle through controls and the bottom button activates the current control.

At the top of the menu is the Close Menu button:

This button simply hides the menu so you can focus on your game.

Next there’s the ‘Show scene while in menu’ check box.

Seeing the game while you’re adjusting settings can be helpful, but sometimes it can also be distracting. This shows or hides the game, but only while you’re in the menu.

Next we have four sliders:

  • Depthiness: This slider controls how deep the scene goes into the display and how far it pops out. While it may be tempting to crank this all the way up, doing so can be hard on the eyes.

  • Focus: Looking Glass displays have one plane of depth that appears more sharp than others. This slider lets you control which depth plane is in focus. If too much of the scene appears out of focus, use the Depthiness slider to decrease overall depth and try again.

  • Tessellation: On each frame, Refract creates a 3D object to match the shape of your game world. This slider controls how much detail goes into that object. In general, this slider should be set as low as possible while still looking good. Setting this slider too high will result in a “swimming” effect each time the object updates.

  • Interpolation: By default, Refract renders 48 different camera angles for your game world. You can think of this slider as skipping some camera angles while trying to guess what’s in between. On fast machines this slider should be all the way to the left. Turning this slider up could significantly improve frame rate, but it could also significantly reduce picture quality.

And finally, there’s the Quit button:

This button saves your settings and shuts down Refract.

Improving Performance

By far the biggest impact on performance is everything that happens before Refract gets involved. Since Refract can only use resources that aren’t already in use, it’s very important to optimize your OS, the game and ReGlass before starting Refract.

OS Optimization

  1. I know this goes without saying, but do make sure you have the latest graphics driver installed.

  2. Set Windows Desktop to 1920 x 1080. Games that use “Fullscreen Windowed” might render at lower resolutions, but their output is then scaled to desktop resolution. High Desktop resolutions take significantly longer to capture, which reduces the total frame rate possible in Refract.

  3. Close extra programs running in the background or System Tray. These might consume CPU cycles that Refract could otherwise use.

Game Optimization

  1. Set the game to run at 1920 x 1080. While your machine may be capable of far more than that, we’re trying to reserve capacity for Refract to run in the background. Also, since we’ll be playing on an 8” display, higher resolutions will have diminishing returns.

  2. Turn VSync and / or Frame Limiting ON. Your machine may be capable of 144 FPS but the Portrait is not. Rendering extra frames takes time away that Refract could use to run.

  3. If necessary, turn off advanced features like Ray Tracing. Remember: Though your game may be hitting 60 FPS, for Refract it’s all about the extra capacity left over between those frames.

ReGlass Optimization

Refract Optimization

Everything above will have far more impact than what’s listed here, but these options can help too:

  1. Reducing Tessellation can help, but reducing it too far will result in a flat image with jaggies.

  2. Increasing Interpolation will help, but at significant cost to picture quality.

Questions

Why “Refract”?

Once installed, draws your game with color on one side and depth on the other.

Download and get it fully working with your game. Use the page for help with this process.

Download the latest and unzip it.

The main optimization in ReGlass is to turn on once everything’s configured. This can easily free up 15 - 20 FPS that Refract can use.

Wikipedia defines as “the change in direction of a wave passing from one medium to another”. Since Refract redirects light from a 2D display to a holographic one, I thought the name was appropriate.

Why is associated with but Refract associated with ?

I usually release open source software under my personal github (), but since Refract includes binary executables I wanted to be a little more careful. SolerSoft is a LLC I created years ago exactly for this purpose. Still, note that none of my open source projects include any kind of warranty. Use at your own risk! ;)

ReGlass
ReGlass
ReGlass Game Settings
Refract Archive
Performance Mode
refraction
ReGlass
jbienz
SolerSoft
jbienz
🔍
Page cover image
Looking Glass Portrait
ReGlass