No, I’m not talking about Mozilla’s newest mass-roll-outed Mr Robot Addon. Looking Glass is a Linux app developed by Geoffrey McRae of HostFission. It lets you relay frames rendered within a virtual machine (with a Pass-through GPU) to the host machine in a very fast fashion. It also handles mouse and keyboard input.
What is Looking Glass?
Looking Glass is a revolutionary application that allows you to run a virtual machine with GPU passthrough while seamlessly displaying the VM’s output on your host system. This is particularly useful for running Windows games or applications on a Linux host without the typical performance penalties associated with traditional virtualization.
Key Features
- Low Latency: Minimal delay between VM rendering and host display
- GPU Passthrough: Utilizes dedicated GPU hardware for the virtual machine
- Seamless Input: Mouse and keyboard input handling between host and guest
- High Performance: Near-native gaming performance in virtualized environments
Use Cases
The setup is particularly valuable for:
- Gaming on Windows while maintaining a Linux host system
- Running Windows-specific applications with full GPU acceleration
- Testing and development scenarios requiring isolated Windows environments
- Maintaining security separation while preserving performance
This technology represents a significant advancement in virtualization, bridging the gap between the security and flexibility of virtual machines and the performance requirements of modern applications and games.