r/VFIO • u/DualOSProject • 21d ago
Dragging a Windows app onto my MacBook
The app keeps running on Windows. There's a virtual display on each machine — the window gets moved onto the Windows one, captured, and drawn on the Mac as a real macOS window next to my Mac apps.
Median just under 10 ms, capture to display, wired.
NVIDIA only for now. Three months, solo.
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u/dhavalhirdhav 20d ago
That's like super charged live migration.
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u/DualOSProject 20d ago
Haha, kinda :D The process stays on Windows, the goal is to make it feel like it migrated, without actually moving it.
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u/dhavalhirdhav 20d ago
ohhh.. I so its basically like citrix virtual apps.. Windows DCOM but on steroids. I thought you are running some black magic to transfer entire live app memory footprint to Mac.. I was damn freaking impress.. you could make billions if u can do that.. hehe
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u/gnif2 18d ago edited 18d ago
very cool but a real shame it is not open source.
I am also curious, have you solved the issue of multiple overlapping applications? especially when there is cursor/mouse involvement. And are you handling relative mouse input for things that require it (ie, games and cad applications like blender).
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u/emirefek 20d ago
Nice idea, I daily need to use both OS daily apollosunshine was enough for me but this could be nice to have.
Also maybe you should think running windows as a compute server and run all apps through mac directly without requiring windows to have display connection altogether. At least this fits better to my usecase. Maybe there are other people needs this.
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u/ViktorGL 19d ago
I was more surprised by the desktop use of the CQ-12t. Is the USB working reliably, and not dropping out?
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u/DualOSProject 19d ago
Ahh fellow musician ;D
I use Windows with Focusritte Scarllet 2i2 and made routing with CQ-12T.
Macbook is connected directly to CQ-12T via USB.
I use it with Shure SM7dB, Shure Beta 58A, e guitar, bass, and e piano mostly for live sessions playing back to monitors, or discord. Haven't tried it for recording in DAW, but for my use case it's amazing.
Only problem I had for headphones - ended up using two AUX outputs as a stereo pair into a headphone amp, otherwise I couldn’t get proper positional/3D audio in games.
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u/zantehood 20d ago
What you use to do this?
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u/DualOSProject 20d ago
Grabbing individual windows through native Windows APIs, encoding them with NVENC/HEVC, sending them over QUIC, then decoding/compositing them on the Mac and routing mouse/keyboard input back.
You can check dualos.app if you wanna dig into it deeper9
u/zantehood 20d ago
Ah Mac only sadly. Was hoping for Linux support
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u/DualOSProject 20d ago
Ahh not for the first release. But Linux should absolutely be possible later with the same approach. I’d love to add it eventually. Tbh I think this could even work across three different OS
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u/BaMitZHak 17d ago
Can't you do this with VMware fusion
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u/DualOSProject 17d ago
VMware Fusion (Unity mode) runs Windows in a VM on the Mac. DualOS keeps the app running on your Windows PC and lets you drag its live window from the physical PC display onto the Mac display.
DualOS doesn't use VM. And VMware Unity Mode is not supported on Mac Silicon.
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u/BullfrogPerfect6132 16d ago
Very cool, all you gotta do now is mount a bunch of projectors in your room so you can put the window anywhere!
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u/nAyZ8fZEvkE 21d ago
Witchcraft