🍽️Looking Glass Core SDK

(last updated July 2024)

Note: Looking Glass Core is no longer being actively developed. Please instead see Looking Glass Bridge SDK which supports all of the same features and more.

Looking Glass Core (previously HoloPlay Core) apps will continue to work with Looking Glass displays sold prior to 2024.

The Looking Glass Core SDK is a cross-platform software development kit that makes your existing 3D software compatible with the Looking Glass. Use your application’s current UI and workflow to build seamless plug and play experiences for your end users.

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 Looking Glass Bridge installed on their machine.

How It Works

The Looking Glass 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

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

📸Virtual Camera💡Quilts

An example OpenGL project is distributed as part of the Looking Glass 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, check out our key concepts page.

🔑Key Concepts

API References

Visit our documentation on the C API for more detailed support on how to effectively use and integrate the Looking Glass Core SDK into your application.

Questions

Email us at [e-mail] if you have any further questions about how you can integrate Looking Glass Core into your software.