Become a sponsor to Geoffrey McRae

Hi, I’m Geoffrey McRae, the creator and lead developer of Looking Glass.

I am a self-taught software and systems engineer with a particular interest in Linux, graphics, virtualisation, device drivers and solving difficult problems at the boundary between hardware and software. I enjoy finding unconventional solutions to problems that are often dismissed as impractical or impossible.

Looking Glass began because I wanted to use Linux full-time without giving up applications and games that required Windows. GPU passthrough made it possible to run Windows in a virtual machine with near-native performance, but using that VM still required a physical monitor connected to the passed-through GPU. I started experimenting with ways to transfer the completed framebuffer back to Linux with as little latency and overhead as possible, and Looking Glass grew from that proof of concept.

Today, Looking Glass is far more than the original framebuffer relay. It includes a Windows Indirect Display Driver that creates its own virtual monitor, direct keyboard and mouse input, end-to-end HDR support, precise frame scheduling, OBS integration, high-quality multi-channel audio and an increasingly modular transport architecture. The goal remains the same: make using Windows from Linux feel as immediate and natural as using a local application.

My other open-source work has included contributions to the Linux kernel, fixes for AMD virtualisation and PCI hardware issues, the platform-independent AudioEngine used by Kodi, and the creation of stm32flash.

I now work on Looking Glass full-time. The project is free and open source, and its continued development depends on donations and sponsorship.

Sponsorship helps cover both my living expenses and the direct costs of maintaining a project like this: hosting and build infrastructure, test and validation hardware, Windows driver signing, development equipment and the time required to investigate difficult platform-specific problems.

By sponsoring me, you are helping keep Looking Glass independent, openly developed and available to everyone. You are also giving me the time to continue improving its performance, reliability and compatibility while developing the larger features that would otherwise be difficult to pursue.