PassthroughForge cuts custom-shaped windows into your VR view - exactly where your real HOTAS, keyboard, knee-board or coffee mug sits. Switch profiles in one click and you're rigged for any cockpit.
Full feature overview — every PassthroughForge tool in one walkthrough
Settings & tabs deep-dive — every option in every tab explained
Every VR pilot knows the moment: you need to adjust a real-world control mid-flight - a switch on the HOTAS, a key on the keyboard, a glance at the knee-board - but reaching it accurately means lifting the headset and breaking immersion. The result: you either fly blind to your own hardware, or you trade the VR experience for a quick peek at reality. PassthroughForge removes the trade-off.
The wider OpenXR community has been clear about what a great mixed-reality tool needs to look like: a dedicated OpenXR API layer + configuration app, free of unrelated kneeboard or overlay logic, focused entirely on bringing reality into VR. That's not a side feature you bolt onto a kneeboard tool - that's its own product. PassthroughForge is built exactly to that spec.
The Virtual Desktop pipeline that makes most consumer passthrough setups work today. Our core, since day one.
Real-time controller tracking welds any cutout to a Quest 3 controller. Switch a mask from World and it keeps its current placement (no jump) — ideal for a controller mounted in your cockpit, handheld panels, or motion-rig setups where the cockpit physically moves with you.
Built-in Windows.Graphics.Capture pipeline streams any open desktop program straight into a VR mask at up to 120 Hz. No DIY webcam rig required.
A 30-line Lua hook in DCS forwards chat, trigger texts and AI radio over loopback UDP straight onto an A4 kneeboard mask. Never miss a 9-line, BRC, or wingman call. Loopback only - nothing leaves your PC.
Drop a PDF or image series onto the editor and it becomes a paged VR panel with rebindable next/previous shortcuts (defaults Ctrl+A / Ctrl+D). Color Anti-Bleed keeps photo content readable against the chroma key.
A focused desktop UI for designing, mirroring, and persisting mask layouts per aircraft — separate from your sim, runs in the background while you fly. Tray-mode keeps every shortcut live behind DCS via a low-level keyboard hook.
One-touch buttons for mask toggle, recenter, profile swap, page next/previous and Trace VR — no scripting required. Hand-built profile shipped on the website, ready to import.
XR_FB_passthrough (Quest Link, Pico 4),
XR_HTC_passthrough, and
XR_ENVIRONMENT_BLEND_MODE_ALPHA_BLEND for Varjo /
SteamVR users who don't run Virtual Desktop. On the roadmap.
Cylinder-shaped masks via
XR_KHR_composition_layer_cylinder and motion-
compensated head-locked HUD elements via
XR_REFERENCE_SPACE_TYPE_VIEW. Planned.
PassthroughForge sits transparently between your sim and your VR runtime as an OpenXR API layer. You decide where reality breaks through.
Whether you have a perfect cockpit screenshot, want to draw on the fly, or just need a quick rectangle - PassthroughForge gives you four ways to cut a passthrough window into your VR view. Use them on their own or mix them in the same profile.
The 2D editor lets you draw the exact contours where your VR image should turn transparent. Bezier curves for smooth edges, live mirroring for symmetric layouts, reference images so you can trace right over a cockpit photo.
Build a layout once, save it under any name, load it whenever you fly that bird. Each profile holds the full mask geometry, positions, gaze settings, and group offsets - independent of any in-session recenter you might do later.
When the VR runtime re-anchors your stage origin (Oculus button, Virtual Desktop reset, headset off and on again), the whole mask group ends up pointing the wrong way. Hit Ctrl+Delete and PassthroughForge rotates the entire group rigidly around your head until the centroid sits straight in front of you again - all relative spacing between masks stays exactly as you built it.
Load approach charts, mission briefings or system diagrams as PDFs or image series. PassthroughForge turns them into floating VR panels - paged, freely positioned, and immune to chroma-key bleed thanks to a built-in Color Anti-Bleed pass. Document panels can be placed on top of your existing passthrough windows - drop a checklist over your real throttle, overlay an approach plate on the windscreen cutout, stack a kneeboard above a hardware MFD - the document layer renders on top so it stays readable no matter what's behind it.
Any mask can be attached to your left or right Quest 3 controller - the cutout follows the controller's pose in real time. Beyond handheld use, this opens up an interesting workflow for motion rig owners: strap a controller to your rig frame and the masks track every pitch, roll and yaw the motion platform produces. No more drift between your real cockpit panel and its VR cutout when the rig moves.
Pick any open Windows program - a browser tab with a YouTube video, a navigation chart in your favourite EFB app, a Twitch chat, an OBS browser source, your discord call, anything that runs on your desktop - and PassthroughForge places it as a live updating mask in your cockpit. The mask refreshes ~30 times per second (configurable up to 120 Hz), so videos, animations and interactive content all stay smooth.
Use cases: floating reference videos, live-updating charts, remote monitoring panels, Discord overlay, MFD content from external EFB software, and anything else that already runs on your desktop.
DCS broadcasts a lot of information you're expected to memorise on the fly — CAS 9-lines, JTAC follow-up, the carrier's BRC and tower frequencies, ATIS, mission trigger texts, multiplayer chat. PassthroughForge can pin all of that to a virtual A4 kneeboard floating exactly where you want it, so you can glance over instead of trying to remember.
127.0.0.1:31090).
Nothing leaves your PC, no firewall rule needed.
Saved Games\DCS*\Scripts\Hooks\ folder it finds.
Manual install is a single file copy, fully documented in the
manual.
Built for the players who'd rather fly the jet than juggle a notepad. Especially handy on the Hornet boat traps, BFM in flights of four, and any mission with chatty JTACs or multi-step trigger texts.
Sometimes the panel you need isn't in the cockpit and isn't a whole window either — it's a small region of your desktop. A DCS DDI you exported to a second monitor, a single MFD pop-out, the Mission Editor briefing pane, a TacView replay corner, a YouTube tutorial running in a browser tab. Region Capture lets you draw a rectangle around any part of any monitor and stream those pixels live into a VR mask.
Particularly useful in DCS for exporting MFD/DDI displays from the multi-display setup, in MSFS for cropping out single instruments from a popped-out cockpit, and for any workflow where the exact pixels you need don't line up with a single window.
Every other kneeboard solution makes you manage pages by hand: drop images in folders, switch tabs, re-point things every time you change aircraft. PassthroughForge does the opposite. Point a mask at a DCS content source by ticking a checkbox, and it populates and refreshes itself — the moment DCS tells it which jet you're in, which theatre loaded, which mission is running. Because PassthroughForge owns both a dedicated mixed-reality compositor and a live DCS hook, it can do things a document-viewer simply can't.
.miz on the fly and surfaces the pages the
mission designer baked in. Briefing is rendered
live — not a screenshot, actually composed.
Built from the ground up as an OpenXR layer + a desktop configurator with a loopback DCS hook — the architecture the mixed-reality use case actually wants. The result does everything you'd expect a kneeboard tool to do, and then keeps going.
The integrated DCS Moving Map scrolls a real terrain chart under your aircraft — north-up, centered on you — with labelled airfields (TACAN / ILS / runway) and your planned flight-plan drawn as a line with numbered waypoints.
You don't have to build every cutout from scratch any more. Straight from the editor's Files card you can share a mask you made and import masks other pilots have shared.
A dedicated Notes (Whiteboard) tab gives you a clean, pressure-sensitive white page floating right where you want it — jot a kneecard, mark up a chart, sketch the recovery pattern, all without ever taking the headset off.
Point a webcam at your HOTAS, your keyboard, your button boxes — or the whole pit — and stream it straight into a VR mask. It's a real second pair of eyes: position the panel wherever you want and glance at your physical gear without ever touching the headset.
Super exciting for headsets without passthrough cameras — like Pimax. Wired PCVR headsets have no camera passthrough at all: an external USB camera plus PassthroughForge is your passthrough — see your HOTAS, keyboard and cockpit without ever lifting the headset.
Type a URL, get a live web page floating in your cockpit. SkyVector charts, a YouTube tutorial, your squadron's wiki, a Discord web tab — PassthroughForge runs a full embedded browser engine without any window on your desktop, so it keeps playing and updating even while DCS has focus and PassthroughForge is minimised.
Your first mask, step by step:
Click + Add Mask and pick the polygon tool.
Click around the area you want to see (HOTAS, keyboard, controls).
Use sliders or keyboard shortcuts to place the mask over your real gear.
Save As "DCS Hornet" - next session everything sits exactly right.
Hands-on tutorials covering the most-used workflows - setting up your first masks, binding cutouts to a motion controller, and snapping the whole group back into place after a playspace recenter.
The fastest path from “just installed” to “flying with masks aligned”. Feature overview gets you oriented in ~6 minutes, the settings deep-dive then walks through every slider so you know what each option actually controls.
A single end-to-end walkthrough covering roughly every PassthroughForge tool: the Add-Mask wizard, profile auto-switch, controller tracking, monitor & window capture, document/PDF kneeboards, DCS auto-sources and the in-VR transform shortcuts. Start here if you've just installed the app.
A close look at the right-hand Properties panel: every section ([P] Position, [R] Rotation, [V] Visibility, [G] Global Offset, [M] Mirror & Group, [T] Tracking, [Rg] Region Crop) walked through option-by-option, with the Settings menu (Passthrough Color, Step factors, Capture Hz, Mask Shortcuts) explained alongside. Watch this after the feature overview if you want to know what every slider actually does.
The full step-by-step walkthrough: setting up multiple masks on a real cockpit, in real time. ~6 minutes.
The new Add / Subtract draw-mode toggle and the editor-only Mask α slider in action. Subtract turns every painting tool (Brush, Rectangle, Polygon, Fill) into a hole-puncher — filled rectangle outside, Subtract rectangle inside, instant frame in two clicks. Mask α drops the mask to semi-transparent on the canvas so the reference image underneath stays visible while you trace cockpit edges (the VR view stays fully opaque). Shipped in v2.58.
The brand-new DCS Messages mask in action: a 9-line, the carrier's BRC, JTAC follow-ups and AI radio calls all stream live onto an A4 kneeboard floating exactly where you want it. Never juggle a notepad mid-merge again.
The new DCS auto-kneeboard in action: the DCS hook detects what you're flying and pulls it straight onto a virtual kneeboard in VR — your aircraft kneeboard, the theater pages, the loaded mission's .miz images and the rendered briefing (optionally including enemy SAM / AAA threat locations). All four sit on one mask as a tab strip, switchable mid-flight with a HOTAS button or the keyboard. No headset off, no Alt-Tab, zero per-flight setup.
The shortcuts that matter for fast mask setup — positioning, rotating, scaling, snapping to view and recentering — demonstrated in one continuous take. Most of these are rebindable in Settings → Mask Shortcuts.
Attach a mask to your left or right Quest 3 controller - it follows the controller's pose in full 6DoF. Perfect for moveable charts and kneeboards: pick up an approach plate in your virtual hand, position it where you want, set it down.
Whenever your VR runtime re-anchors the playspace (Oculus button, proximity sensor, Virtual Desktop reset), your cockpit cutouts end up facing the wrong way. One keystroke (Ctrl+Del) snaps the whole mask group rigidly around your head so it lines up with your forward direction again - relative spacing stays pixel-exact, and your profile data is never modified.
No masks yet for your cockpit? Draw them straight on top of your real cockpit. With Trace VR mode the mask quad shows your real-world passthrough and your drawn polygon as a yellow overlay - every point you place lands exactly where you want it, with instant in-headset feedback while you shape the cutout.
Got a screenshot or photo of your cockpit? Drop it in as a Load Reference, trace your polygon right on top, done. The fastest way to build a clean, precise mask without ever putting the headset on.
Everything you need for fast mask creation, editing, and in-flight
adjustment.
For the full list of every action and binding, see the
manual.
Settings → Mask Shortcuts…, click any
binding row, and press the key or push any button on a connected
HOTAS / joystick / gamepad. Warthog, Virpil, VKB, Thrustmaster,
generic stick — if Windows sees it, PassthroughForge can
bind to it. Buttons and hat-switch directions (POV up / down /
left / right) are both supported, and bindings stay live in
tray mode even when DCS has focus.
Drop the included .streamDeckProfile onto the
Elgato Stream Deck app and every PassthroughForge shortcut
becomes a tactile button. The 15-key Standard layout is
organised in folders - Per-Mask Move / Rotate / Scale, plus
Global Move / Rotate / Scale and the Recenter / Show-Hide /
Q-fine / E-coarse tools on the main page. Icons are
colour-coded by axis, identical to the in-VR cheat sheet.
Designed for the Stream Deck Standard (15 keys, 5x3). Folder style with a Back button on every page. Works alongside (not instead of) the keyboard - both sources fire the same hotkeys, so muscle memory carries over.
⬇ Download Stream Deck Profile
Battle-tested features that make the difference.
Tray mode with low-level keyboard hook. Ctrl+F1 toggles mask 1 even when DCS holds focus and blocks every other tool.
Forgot which hotkey does what? One click and your entire keymap appears as a floating 3D panel in front of you.
Masks appear only when you look at them. Cockpit stays clean, info shows up exactly when you need it.
Cockpit symmetric? Draw one mask, get the mirrored copy automatically generated. Bezier handles included.
Async texture upload, cross-process keyed mutex sync, color anti-bleed. No FPS hit, chroma-key shimmer strongly reduced.
Snap to View modifies a global pivot offset, never your mask data. Iterate as much as you want without fear of corrupting the layout.
PassthroughForge is built like a piece of professional software, not a hobby tool. Here's the architecture - and why we made these choices.
At its core, PassthroughForge is a native OpenXR API layer -
a DLL that the VR runtime loads directly into your sim's process.
It submits its own composition layers alongside the sim's
frames, so your masks render at native quality and stay perfectly
in sync with the cockpit. No external overlay app, no extra GPU pass.
Why: OpenXR layers are the standardized, low-overhead way to inject content into a VR session. They work with every OpenXR-conformant runtime - Quest, Index, Reverb, Pico - without per-headset workarounds.
The desktop editor (where you draw masks) and the OpenXR layer
(which renders them) live in different processes. They talk over
a named shared-memory segment with a Win32 mutex
and an explicit version handshake. Mask transforms stream to the
layer every frame; updates show up immediately in VR.
Why: Decoupling editor from renderer means the editor can run while the sim is starting, can be minimized to tray, can crash and restart - all without disturbing the in-VR view.
Mask textures are uploaded to a
DXGI shared D3D11 texture with KEYEDMUTEX.
The editor process writes RGBA pixels into a staging buffer, copies
to the shared texture under mutex, and the layer process opens the
same texture and copies it into the OpenXR swapchain - also under
mutex.
Why: Without keyed-mutex sync the layer can read the texture mid-write, producing top-to-bottom build-up artifacts and chroma-key bleed. This was the single biggest fix in v2.26.
Virtual Desktop's chroma-key has a tolerance ring around the passthrough color. Photo content with pixels close to that color gets partially keyed and looks washed out. PassthroughForge scans every Document Mask pixel and shifts any RGB inside the ring radially outward so VD never confuses image content with passthrough.
Why: A few-percent shift in shadow tones is imperceptible to the human eye but takes the chroma-key out of the picture. Lets you use any passthrough color without restricting your image content.
Snap to View doesn't mutate the mask poses - it stores a
pivot point + rotation quaternion that the layer
applies on top of every world-anchored quad. Mask data on disk
stays exactly as you authored it.
Why: Iterating on a layout becomes risky if every recenter writes back to the profile. Separating session state from saved layout means undo is always one click away, and profiles stay portable across machines.
When PassthroughForge is in tray mode, a
WH_KEYBOARD_LL hook intercepts keys before any
foreground process - including DCS - sees them. Matched
shortcuts post a custom message to our window and the keystroke
is swallowed.
Why: Many sims use DirectInput / RawInput which bypasses Win32 RegisterHotKey. Without the LL hook your shortcuts would silently fail the moment you put your hands on the controls.
The questions that come up most often in beta testing and Discord. If yours isn't here, write to seidl@xrmacher.com.
Yes — that's real-time controller tracking. Set a mask's Tracking Target to Real Time Tracking Left / Right Controller and it follows that controller live, recomputed every frame.
It keeps its place when you switch. Position the mask exactly where you want it in World mode first, then switch it to a controller — the mask stays put to the millimetre (it does not jump onto the controller) and tracks from there. Mount the controller rigidly in your cockpit and the cutout is welded to your real hardware.
On a motion platform a normal world-anchored mask floats off the hardware as soon as the rig pitches. Strap a Quest controller to the rig frame, switch that mask to controller tracking, and the cutout follows every pitch / roll / yaw the platform produces — it stays welded to the real throttle or panel no matter how much the rig moves.
Setup notes. The controller must be ON and you must be in a VR environment; a controller mode can only be picked once the L: and R: status indicators are GREEN. In Virtual Desktop, set INPUT → "Automatically hide controllers" OFF and STREAMING → "Forward tracking data to PC" ON. A mounted controller goes to standby after ~30 s of stillness (normal Quest behaviour) — just tap it once and tracking snaps back; keep it where the headset cameras can see it. Full walkthrough in the manual.
No. The OpenXR layer and the editor talk to each other through
shared memory on your local machine. The DCS Messages hook uses
loopback only (127.0.0.1:31090). The only network
traffic ever leaving your PC is the optional beta-signup form and
the manual update check — both initiated by you.
The chroma-key passthrough trick is what Virtual Desktop, ALVR and certain Pico builds offer for Quest headsets. Native PCVR headsets without a passthrough camera (Reverb G2, Index, Pimax) can't show real cockpit through a chroma-key cutout — they have nothing to "show through." Document masks, Window Capture and DCS Messages still work for those headsets, they just appear on a black background instead of passthrough.
DCS treats anything in Scripts\Hooks\ as a
client-side mod. Most servers don't enforce strict integrity
checks against this folder, but some do. If a strict-IC server
flags you, just remove
%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\DCS\Scripts\Hooks\PassthroughForge.lua
for that session — PassthroughForge keeps working, you just
won't see the message panel update. Drop it back in afterwards.
The OpenXR layer composites a handful of textured quads into the existing swapchain — a few microseconds of GPU time per frame, no measurable CPU load. The editor itself is idle when minimised to tray. Window Capture is the only feature with a noticeable cost: each captured window readback is a few MB/frame at the configured refresh rate (default 30 Hz). Capping it lower for static charts costs nothing.
Yes. Profiles are plain JSON files in
%APPDATA%\PassthroughForge\profiles\. Send the file,
the recipient drops it in their folder, hits the profile dropdown
and the layout loads. Texture pixel data is base64-embedded so
there are no missing-asset issues. Document mask page paths are
stored absolute though — if your friend doesn't have the
same PDF in the same location, they'll need to re-import it.
Every feature on this page started as a real-world issue from a real pilot - the gaze flicker, the keyed-mutex fix, the Snap to View math, the controller-tracked overlay for motion rigs. PassthroughForge iterates fast and we listen hard.
Drop a bug report, a feature request, a screenshot of your setup, or a 30-second screen recording of "this isn't working how I want" - we read all of it and most of it ends up in the next build.
We still have a few spots open in the PassthroughForge open beta. If you like what you see, leave your email below and we'll send you the build, update notes and setup tutorials as they're released.
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The Setup installer is not yet code-signed (a proper signing certificate is coming soon). Modern Windows therefore shows one or two generic “unknown publisher” warnings on first install. The build is clean — independently scanned by all common AV engines (0 / 62 detections).
Verify the installer on your machine (optional):
SHA-256 = 380F159A6D222091DCF14DE3F5AF4C39C6A0DBF6392641998964633AE9C9C7B4
PowerShell: Get-FileHash .\SetupPassthroughForge-v2.97.63.exe -Algorithm SHA256
What you may see and what to click:
After “Run anyway” the installer wizard opens normally. Still stuck? Ping us on Discord and we'll help.