So why hardware? There are no official APIs available on Mac or Windows for creating a virtual display. We have competitors that use low-level drivers to create a virtual display, but that is prone to subtle bugs. For example, virtual displays on Windows require reimplementing the GPU stack, which is extremely complex. We went with hardware because it's the only way to provide absolute reliability and compatibility across all PC programs. Luna Display is indistinguishable from a regular monitor to Windows.
Luna Display started as Mac/iOS apps written almost entirely in Objective-C. To go cross-platform, we selected Rust as our language of choice, and we've been incredibly happy with it. Our apps are now mostly Rust, with glue layers in C# on Windows, and Objective-C on iPadOS for the UI code.
Another interesting thing about our tech stack is that it contains a custom video compression algorithm and network protocol that we built for very low latency. The network protocol is built in Rust and sits on top of UDP and has a custom congestion control system. Our video compressor is C/C++ and a mix of assembly for max performance.
If you're interested, we'd love to have you back us on Kickstarter! I'm also happy to answer any questions about hardware, Windows, Rust, getting sherlocked, you name it. :)
PS: Luna Display also works with Mac if that's your jam!
(And it would be nice to confirm that you'd recommend using Luna Display as the only display for a headless Mac Mini too.)
I'm curious – did you have to change the hardware dongle much, or is this mostly a software stack rewrite to support Windows?
The USB-C dongle we didn't have to change and that will work as is on Windows.
