Hi, Chuck
If you manually copy numpy files in the plug-in directory, you can use numpy without virtual environment… However, to get numpy binary files, you have to make a virtual environment once anyway and I think it is better to use it and no need to activate it.
And in Windows, there is a bigger problem. The Python interpreter Gimp uses is not compatible with normal numpy binaries, and it is very difficult to get GIMP compatible numpy binaries, because the Python interpreter in Windows is built under special environment.
I have some ideas to solve this problem and now I’m struggling to get the solution.