I bought a pair of XREAL Air glasses in mid-2023 and was disappointed to find that none of my devices supported them. My Steam Deck was the only device that would even display anything on the glasses, but it couldn't take advantage of any of the head-tracking or AR capabilities of the glasses. XREAL themselves have taken a sort of hardware-first approach, to the detriment of all their software offerings, and Linux/Steam Deck doesn't even seem to be on their radar.

I immediately started tinkering with some of the open source projects that the developer community has put together, and realized it would be possible to build some of the functionality that the XREAL and Steam Deck communities desperately want. In September I announced that my Decky plugin was live, making the installation and configuration of my Linux gaming driver trivial. The XREAL community ate this up and I knew I couldn't stop there.

I quickly started researching what would be needed for my next project that I call Breezy Desktop, which is an attempt at building a virtual workspace (productivity) application for AR glasses on Linux. I tinkered with various options and found that a Vulkan shader integration would be a pretty simple initial approach that could get me a quick win on Steam Deck. I previewed that to the XREAL community and they went crazy for it, so I devoted 4 full-time weeks to the effort and eventually announced it to much fanfare; the response has been amazing.

Since then I've continued to add features and match what the XREAL Beam device offers, including Smooth Follow, Sideview, and SBS support. I also reached out to other XR device manufacturers. VITURE enthusiastically supported my effort and put out a Linux SDK that I incorporated. RayNeo and Rokid are now fully integrated as well. In September 2024 I announced a huge update for the plugin that allows its effects to be applies to all games and nearly all menus on the Steam Deck, it's no longer limited to just Vulkan games.

I released the GNOME implementation of Breezy Desktop for productivity in June 2024 and quickly followed with widescreen mode, support for ARM64 and a broader GNOME version support. A lot more is still in store for this project:

• Multiple virtual monitors in Breezy GNOME
• KWin Effects for KDE (steam deck desktop mode)
• Monado support (and maybe 6DoF support -- e.g. XREAL Light -- with it)

If you've found my work useful, or it's saved you from another device purchase, or you're looking forward to any of my future roadmap, your support here will help greatly.

If you want to stay on top of all the latest development, you can follow me on Reddit, Ko-fi, Github, or join the LinuXR Discord server where I post more regular updates.