NerdLens
Put your computer screen in a headset you already own.
A wired, open-source VR desktop experiment for iPhone and Google Cardboard.
NerdLens captures your desktop, compresses it into JPEG frames, sends those frames over USB, and renders them on a virtual screen inside a stereoscopic Cardboard view. No expensive headset. No cloud streaming. Just a phone, a cardboard viewer, and an arguably unreasonable amount of curiosity.
Important
NerdLens is an early proof of concept, not a polished consumer app. The current mobile project targets iOS, requires a source build, and is best suited to hacking and experimentation.
What it can do
Stream a selected display or window into VR at a configurable target of 10–60 FPS
Keep traffic on a wired USB tunnel through iproxy
Show a live preview, connection state, frame count, resolution, and target FPS
Move the virtual display closer or farther away without leaving the headset
Recover from interrupted frame writes with automatic reconnect attempts
Keep the iPhone awake during a viewing session
How it works
The phone runs the TCP server; the desktop host connects to localhost:12345, which iproxy forwards to the attached iPhone. Each message starts with a one-byte type followed by a big-endian payload length and the payload itself.
Quick start
You will need
macOS and Xcode
An iPhone running iOS 13 or newer
A Google Cardboard-compatible viewer
A USB cable
Unity Hub with Unity 6000.1.5f1 and iOS Build Support
Bun, Rust, and the Tauri system prerequisites
iproxy from libimobiledevice
Install iproxy with Homebrew:
Then clone the project:
1. Build the iPhone client
Open the Test0 directory in Unity Hub using Unity 6000.1.5f1.
Open Assets/Scenes/SampleScene.unity.
Switch the build target to iOS and build the Xcode project.
Open the generated project in Xcode, select your development team, connect your iPhone, and run the app on the device.
Place the phone in your Cardboard viewer after the app launches.
The Google Cardboard XR package is already declared in the Unity project and will be fetched by Unity Package Manager.
2. Open the USB tunnel
Connect and trust the iPhone, leave the NerdLens mobile app running, then start the tunnel in a separate terminal:
Keep this process running for the entire session.
3. Start the desktop host
In NerdLens:
Select Connect.
Select Start Recording and choose a display or window.
Put on the headset.
Use the Distance slider to place the screen comfortably.
That is it. Your monitor is now wearing a monitor.
Development
Run these commands from desktop/:
Project map
Troubleshooting
The host says it cannot connect
Launch the iPhone app before selecting Connect.
Confirm the phone is unlocked, trusted, and visible over USB.
Make sure iproxy 12345 12345 is still running.
Check that nothing else is using local port 12345.
The iOS build will not sign
Open the generated Xcode project and choose your Apple development team.
Give the app a unique bundle identifier if Xcode reports a conflict.
Confirm that the connected phone is enabled for development.
The stream freezes or stops
Stop and restart screen capture in the desktop host.
Restart iproxy, then disconnect and reconnect from NerdLens.
Try a lower target FPS; full-resolution JPEG encoding is intentionally simple in this prototype.
The view is uncomfortable
Adjust Distance before putting the phone back into the viewer.
Take regular breaks. This prototype does not yet include a complete comfort-calibration flow.
Roadmap
Smoother, lower-latency video transport
Better connection and error feedback on both ends
Automatic device discovery and iproxy management
Display placement controls and axis locking
A more polished VR environment
Packaged desktop and mobile releases
The wonderfully candid development story—including the failed first Unity project—is in the project journal.
Contributing
Bug reports, experiments, protocol improvements, and delightfully overengineered ideas are welcome. Open an issue or send a pull request with a clear explanation of what changed and how you tested it.
License
NerdLens is free software released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.