Vision Pro with a Windows laptop?

[ddvmor]

Vision Pro with a Macbook looks great, especially with the massive widescreen in OS2. But has anyone tried working with a windows machine - are there good apps tgat do the same thing? How’s the workflow?

I’ve used ‘Immersed’ on Meta Quest 3, but it’s quite janky, laggy and drops the connection every now and again.

For context, I currently do animation and video editing on Adobe apps, and a little bit of gaming - mostly city builders and the like. Lots of staring at minute, fine details.

I’m on the fence about buying an AVP and this is one of the things that might swing it for me.

 

[Macaholic868]

I use Windows on my work PC and if you can sign up for the Microsoft Remote Desktop Beta that app now works on the Vision Pro so I’m able to use OpenVPN to connect to my work’s network then the Remote Desktop app on the Vision Pro and it works well enough with a keyboard and the Magic Trackpad (pre visionOS 2.0 beta) or a wireless mouse (visionOS 2.0 beta) for me to get work done.

In terms of connecting it directly to a PC on your network, if you configured RDP and properly configured the Windows Firewall or whatever software firewall you use you could then use the RDP app to log into that but obviously using RDP is a different experiencing than using the AVP as a virtual monitor / screen mirror.

I did a quick search and found this. Apparently you can use the AVP in a very similar manner in Windows to the way that you can with a Mac. I haven’t tried it personally but have a look. I think it shows what you’re looking for if your PC or laptop has the right kind of port for it. I’m sure there are other solutions out there if your PC or laptop doesn’t.

 

[TLewis]

If you can use the keyboard and mouse attached to the PC, sunshine (on the PC) and moonlight (iPad version, on the AVP) allows you to put a huge display inside the AVP. The key is to use the same resolution at the sunshine (same as your PC's monitor) and moonlight ends; any upscaling or downscaling may result in a blurry display. For gaming, there is a tiny amount of lag, but sunshine/moonshine is supposed to be one of the lowest-latency solutions.

Edit: if your monitor is tiny, you can supposedly create a much larger virtual monitor on your PC for sunshine/moonlight to use, but the instructions seem complicated (it's much easier if you already have a big monitor):

https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1az87zx

(I don't think that testflight moonlight is available any more -- the iPad version should be usable but you will be restricted to using the keyboard and mouse attached to the PC)


(A native AVP version of moonlight is supposedly coming, but that's been said for months. Best not to wait for it.)

Also, another alternative is to use a hardware NDI encoder ($$$$) to convert HDMI from your PC/laptop for display on your AVP: https://gist.github.com/KhaosT/e9b60fc0fb99b9f4512759b953cbf38c (a much cheaper alternative is listed here, but I've never been able to get that to work).

Edit 2: there is one "gotcha" with moonlight, although this is really a Vision OS issue: if you use 5GHz wifi, the AVP constantly switches between channel 149 (for AWDL -- Apple Wireless Direct Link) and whatever channel you normally use for 5GHz. This causes moonlight to occasionally stutter. The fix is to have the AVP use channel 149 for 5GHz wifi so that there is no switching.

 

[-narcan-]

Yeah I tried using 'Screens 3' which works over VNC, and it was awful. Really janky screen movement etc. This was a modern PC (7800x3d, 4070 super etc) over ethernet.

Compared to Mac Virtual Desktop which is flawless.

 

[Testing1]

Okay, so I’m connected to my Windows 10 laptop using Microsoft’s ‘ Windows app mobile’ :

1. Search on the Vision Pro App Store for ‘ remote desktop’ and select Windows app mobile. It is under the iPad tab not the Vision Pro tab.
2. Connect your Vision Pro and Windows 10 laptop to the same network. Using the iPhone hotspot will not work because it assigns IP addresses from different subnets. Verify that your Vision Pro and Windows 10 laptop are on the same subnet before proceeding.
3. Configure Windows app mobile to connect to your Windows 10 laptop
4. Connect to your Windows 10 laptop. Note that the Windows 10 laptop must be running Windows 10 pro, not Windows 10 home edition. Also, if your Windows laptop has been issued by the company you work for, it is likely to be locked down so that remote desktop doesn’t work.

When I first connected the resolution was so high that text was uncomfortably small to read however there are three button super imposed on the right of the remote desktop. The top one is to zoom. The middle one looks like a window symbol and when I clicked on it, I was able to modify the resolution to be more comfortable. The bottom button brings up a virtual keyboard.

Unlike the Vision Pro, I’m unable to drag text up and down using a pinched finger but I can click above or below the slider on the right side of the text to scroll up or down. Also, I was unable to position the cursor with my eye and pinched fingers. However, I was able to drag the mouse pointer with my pinched fingers and then select buttons by pinching again, so I found Remote Desktop to be quite usable if a bit clumsy.

 

[SunMac]

You revived a really old thread but you should try the new Steam Link test flight for AVP instead. You can use more of the AVP features like using your eyes as the mouse. Just minimize Steam Big Picture after you connect and use the Windows desktop.