XReal Air — Multi-Monitor AR Setup on Windows using Nebula & Troubleshooting

4 min readJul 6, 2023

August 2nd, 2023 Update

Nebula for Windows Beta V2 has been released with additional performance and stability improvements. This guide has been updated to reflect that.

Most VR and AR glasses tend to focus on gaming or entertainment. As of now, the XReal Air is the first pair of glasses that is actually viable as a monitor replacement. Imagine being able to travel with just a laptop, tablet, or even phone and put on glasses and have multiple monitor configurations from an ultra-widescreen to a dual/triple monitor setup with near-perfect text quality and 120hz support.

This article will primarily focus on setting up the Windows Beta and providing solutions to common issues. The glasses are currently compatible with a wide variety from phones and laptops to gaming consoles.

If your having issues with the Windows Nebula Beta, skip down to the troubleshooting section.
MAKE SURE TO TRY RESETTING SAVED MONITOR SETTINGS!

Nebula Setup on Windows

Prerequisites

You laptop needs to have a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort output. These tend to have a lightning symbol or the letter D next to them. Otherwise you will need an adapter. The XReal community has compiled a list of community-tested adapters.
Windows Nebula Beta client. You can request access to the Windows Beta client in the XReal Discord. It usually takes 12–24 hours.

Running the Nebula for Windows Beta

To run Nebula for Windows, open the beta folder and run the file named “Nebula for Windows” or “Nebula for Windows.exe”. You can then pick the virtual monitor setup above and click the start button.

Troubleshooting Performance and Stability

General Recommendations

Make sure to have the latest Windows / Driver Updates
Reset Windows Monitor Settings ← ****************
— In my experience, most issues are resolved by resetting External Monitor Settings in Windows. This is because the beta does not do a good job of configuring/editing existing monitor configurations which sometimes causes the virtual displays to be recognized as a display that they are not (like maybe an old monitor you had used before).

How to Reset Windows Monitor Settings

1. Disconnect the XREAL Air and make sure Nebula is closed. 
2. Press Windows + R
3. Type regedit and hit ENTER
4. A window called "Registry Editor" should show.
    Locate this three registry keys:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Connectivity
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\ScaleFactors
4. After finding them right click on each folder and select delete than yes.
5. Open Nebula and re-connect the Air

Mouse Lag

Make sure the primary physical monitor (in my case it was my laptop’s monitor) is set to 60hz or 72hz.
Try disabling/enabling the integrated GPU on your laptop.

Screen Tearing / Stutter

Try to keep an eye on task manager because this could be caused by hardware constraints. If it seems like a hardware bottleneck, try less virtual monitors and/or lower resolutions.
Make sure the refresh rate of the physical monitor matches that of the virtual monitor(s) (60–72hz).

If using USB-C, make sure you are using one that supports display out (look for a DisplayPort icon or a Lightning icon)
Set Vertical Sync to FAST in NVIDIA Control Panel
Adjust other settings in NVIDIA Control Panel. I will share my full list of settings but keep in mind they might not be applicable to everyone:

NVIDIA Control Panel → 3D Settings

Image Scaling:                         On 
Aniostropic Filtering                  Application-Controlled
Antialiasing - FXAA                    Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction        On      
Antialiasing - Mode                    Application-Controlled
Antialiasing - Setting                 Application-Controlled
Antialiasing - Transparency            Off
Automatic Display Switching            Off
Background Application Max Frame Rate  Off
CUDA - GPUs                            All
Low Latency Mode                       Ultra
Max Frame Rate                         Off
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA)          Off
OpenGL GDI Compatibility               Auto
OpenGL rendering GPU                   Auto-Select
Power Management Mode                  Prefer Maximum Perforance
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic        On
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias  Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality            High Performance
Texture Filtering - Trilinear          On
Threaded Optimization                  Auto 
Triple Buffering                       On
Vertical Sync                          Fast
Virtual Reality Pre-Rendered Frames    2
Vulkan/OpenGL Present Method           Auto