When it rains, it pours in software development. Nreal has made progress with their Nebula app on a couple of fronts this week. First, the bug that prevented multiple monitors in MacOS 13.3 or higher has been patched. Just connect your glasses and launch the software, it will prompt you to install the update.
If you have held off updating MacOS past 13.2 like I did, I recommend that you install the Nebula update and then update your operating system. Once everything was fully updated the software worked just as it did before. There are no new features or functions that I could find, it looks and works exactly the same.
The other, and perhaps more exciting, news is that the Nebula App for Windows is available in a semi-open beta. Semi-open meaning that anyone can get it, but you have to sign up. They’re giving away a Steam Deck handheld console to the person that tests the software on the most qualified systems. To get started visit their Reddit post at: https://www.reddit.com/r/nreal/comments/1306xqs/nebula_for_windows_test_has_finally_begun_join_us/
Downloading the software requires a Discord account. It also requires some pretty beefy hardware at the moment. They are suggesting Nvidia 1650 or higher GPUs. I installed it on my gaming laptop (3070) and it ran without too many issues.
You need admin access to install the virtual monitor driver. The driver is signed with a certificate from a public CA but most of the properties are in Chinese so it is difficult to read. The software is not “installed”, you launch the exe from the folder you extracted the compressed download to. It is an RAR download so you will need 3rd party software to decompress it in Windows (7-Zip, WinRAR, WinZip, etc.).
Once you have it up and running you’ll be able to choose from one, two, three, or a single ultra-wide monitor setup. It has crashed a couple of times on me while trying to play games, other than that it seems to work well on my hardware. You’ll want to carefully arrange all of your monitors once you have made your choice and have the app running. The mouse layout can be odd until you do.
Speaking of games, the refresh rate is 60 FPS and you should enable V-Sync. You cannot set the glasses as your main display so you’ll need to move the game to your glasses after it starts the first time. This can be tricky depending on the game itself, look for a “Windowed” mode in the game’s settings. This should get you a title bar to drag it by.
It is “beta” software in every sense of the term. If you are not used to testing mostly finished software, there’s a good chance you won’t enjoy the current state of this app. As I mentioned, it has crashed a few times, the layout needs to manually adjusted, and there’s an issue where the screen can stop responding to clicks that requires a restart. Happy testing.
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