Skip to content
B6

After many months of hard work from our team, I am pleased to announce
Beta 6 which again contains a huge amount of changes along with some
very exciting new features.

---------
Donations
---------

If you like this project and find it useful and would like to help out
you can support this project directly by using the following platforms.

* [GitHub](https://github.com/sponsors/gnif)
* [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/lookingglass)
* [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/gnif)
* [Paypal](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ESQ72XUPGKXRY)
* BTC - 14ZFcYjsKPiVreHqcaekvHGL846u3ZuT13
* ETH - 0x6f8aEe454384122bF9ed28f025FBCe2Bce98db85
* XMR - 47xM4zG7b2tEj4mnSywHve4ydZzn3wzhf22snDRB7aSEcXrgUBpoT2Z4phTnyFMi1sMyQtHbdufMYRQ2PzMn3PGUJAE1dpc

------------------
Major New Features
------------------

Audio Support
-------------
Up until this release getting audio from the Virtual Machine has always
been problematic. Looking Glass now supports the audio transport via the
SPICE protocol. Currently we support output via PulseAudio and PipeWire
so this should just work out of the box for most people. See the
documentation for how to configure your Virtual Machine to make use of
this feature.

For those that are not using SPICE for input or clipboard sync note that
you can use just the audio component alone if you desire.

Thanks to a new team member @spencercw the new audio support has also
been enhanced with [audio skew compensation][1] which corrects for audio
clock drift between the virtual machine and your physical audio hardware
and makes it possible to achieve extremely low latency audio.

Please note that there are still the usual limitations due to QEMUs
implementation of the virtual audio hardware (Intel ICH), such as
48,000Hz 16-bit support only. Also the SPICE audio protocol does not
support greater then two channels (stereo) output.

With these changes we no longer recommend or support the usage of
alternative solutions such as QEMU direct audio output, or the SCREAM
network audio device.

[1]: https://hci.rwth-aachen.de/publications/werner2005a.pdf

Virtual Display Support
-----------------------
Previously it was required to remove the virtual video device from the
virtual machine leaving you blind if you have a VM issue, this is no
longer the case. This update brings with it not only compatibility with
the virtual device being present, but also the ability to use it.

If you have a virtual video device present and the Looking Glass host
service has not started/crashed or you have disabled the video feed, the
client application will fall-back to the SPICE display feed and show an
indicator in the corner to show it has done this.

Please note that if the LG host application is not running or responding
you will need to capture the mouse/keyboard (ScrollLock) to control VM
via SPICE.

----------
Change Log
----------

B6
--

* Added retry logic to NvFBC on restart failure
* Improved the host warning output when the ini file is missing or
  corrupt.
* wayland: implement window size setting for xdg-shell, This should
  allow win:autoResize to work on Wayland when the compositor supports
  such an operation.
* [host] windows: log to stderr that logs will continue in file

B6-rc1
------

* Installer now supports installing IVSHMEM drivers
* Installer is now built with high DPI support
* Audio via SPICE support added for PipeWire
* Cursor scaling support added
* Audio output & input via SPICE via PulseAudio and PipeWire added
* Documentation has a new look based off of readthedocs
* Refactored PureSpice and added logging
* Enhance the KVMFR protocol to pass guest information to connected
  clients
* If spice is in use, check that it's connected to the correct guest
  using it's UUID
* Add LGMP memory corruption detection and recovery for more reliable startups
* Added new message boxes when things go wrong
* Playback and volume keys now supported in capture mode
* Fixed incorrect drawing of masked color mouse pointers on EGL
* Added the ability to specify a startup EGL filter preset
  (`egl:preset=Name`)
* Audio stretching support was added thanks to @spencercw
* Added forwarding of (Windows) guest window flashing to activation
  requests in hosts
* Add microphone privacy features: prompt to allow/deny recording and
  input indicator glyph.
* ScrollLock+Up/Down to simulate volume control keys and ScrollLock+M to
  simulate mute key in guest
* Add new host side down-sample feature to DXGI D3D11 & NvFBC to reduce
  memory bandwidth  & CPU load for DSR/VSR users.
* Updated AMD FSR to v1.0.2
* The input:escapeKey option can now accept string values such as
  `KEY_F1`, and will print a list of valid values if an invalid value is
  provided.
* [X11] Positioning the window and setting full screen via config or
  command line now works as expected
* Docs layout update with straightforward Usage section
* Implemented spice display support
* Added spice display fallback status indicator
* Unified the splash screen for the renderers into an overlay
* Added new `win:overlayDimsDesktop` option for easier A/B filter
  testing/comparisons.
* Allow microphone recording to be stopped/restarted at will
* [EGL] Fix incorrect window letter boxing causing garbage on the bottom
  edge of the screen in some scenarios
* spice cursor channel is implemented, allowing hardware cursors to be
  displayed with spice video
* fixed a wayland protocol error when toggling capture mode at the same
  time as closing the options overlay
* fix a clipboard-related wayland crash in presence of misbehaving third
  party apps
* allow default microphone state to configured at runtime
* improve error message when no display server is loaded