Revive Creator Joins OpenXR Initiative ‘to help create a truly open VR standard’

CrossVR’s Revive, the software that allows HTC Vive users to play games from the Oculus platform, today announced it’s joining one of the leading initiatives in creating an open standard for VR and AR apps and devices, otherwise known as OpenXR.

Lead by the Khronos Group, OpenXR aims to eliminate industry fragmentation by creating a standard, royalty-free API that enables applications to target a wide variety of AR and VR headsets. Those already involved in the initiative include the likes of Oculus, HTC, Samsung, Valve, Epic Games, Unity, AMD and NVIDIA to name a few. Khronos has already helped create several open standards including WebGL, Vulcan, and OpenGL.

image courtesy Khronos Group

Jules Blok, the creator and driving force behind Revive, announced on his Patreon early this morning that CrossVR would be officially joining as an Associate Member, something he says will “represent your interests to help ensure that the next generation of VR headsets will have a truly open standard.”

Blok initially stated that, upon reaching the $2,000 per month donation mark, he would invest the $3,500 it took to join as an Associate Member, a non-voting position in the group that allows for full participation in OpenXR’s development.

Having recently reached his goal, in large part due to the help of a $2,000 monthly recurring donation by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, Blok contacted the the Khronos Group to confirm he had the $3,500 membership fee and was ready to join. To his surprise, Khronos waved the fee, giving him free entrance into the working group.

Blok says the money originally earmarked for the membership fee will be spent on the Revive project instead. Learn more about Revive (and how to install it) on CrossVR’s GitHub.

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Valve Sends ‘Knuckles’ Controller Dev Kit to Revive Developer

Valve isn’t being shy about their support for Jules “LibreVR” Blok, the developer behind Revive, a hack which allows the Vive to play games from the Oculus store. Having patched SteamVR on more than one occasion to ensure Revive’s continued compatibility, the company has now sent Blok the Knuckles controller dev kit

Valve’s new Knuckles controllers have been widely praised by the developers who have been lucky enough to get their hands on them. The company has been sending dev kits of the controllers to select developers, and there’s presently no open way to get one without knowing the right folks at Valve.

Valve has sent one of the dev kits to Blok, the independent developer of Revive, a freely available hack that allows Vive users to play games from the Oculus store. For Oculus’ part, the company’s VR store only officially supports the Rift headset, and in 2016 had something of a standoff with Revive that prompted an update to their platform’s DRM policy which broke the hack. After community outcry, Oculus eventually reversed that decision and has been tolerating the hack since. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey (who is no longer with the company) recently pledged $2,000 per month in support of Revive’s development.

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Valve, who of course now distributes VR games through Steam, seems to have found an ally in Revive, as it opens a door for Vive users into Oculus’ platform, allowing them to play a number of major VR titles that aren’t available on Steam. Without Revive as an independent intermediary, it might seem one step too aggressive if Valve had to build and maintain an unofficial door into Oculus’ platform themselves. Valve itself is however responsible for supporting the Rift on Steam.

Image courtesy Cloudhead Games

In updates to SteamVR, Valve has on multiple occasions made tweaks and changes to ensure that Revive continued to work correctly. And now having sent Blok the Knuckles controllers, it seems pretty clear that Valve is supportive of what Revive is doing.

For Blok’s part the developer says that “these controllers will be very helpful to make a more natural Oculus Touch mapping,” and thanks Valve for sending them. Indeed the Knuckles controllers are more similar to Touch than the present Vive controllers, and with his hands on Knuckles it should make it easier for Blok to integrate proper support for the controllers into Revive once they are available more broadly.

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Oculus Rift Inventor Palmer Luckey Pledges $2K To ReVive Hack

Oculus Rift Inventor Palmer Luckey Pledges $2K To ReVive Hack

Palmer Luckey just reportedly pledged $2,000 to CrossVR’s Patreon campaign which is used to fund the ongoing development of ReVive, a popular hack that allows Vive users to play Oculus-exclusive content that isn’t released on Steam. The move comes off as a bit of a surprise due to the fact that Luckey is the inventor of the Oculus Rift and co-founder of Oculus VR, a company that he is no longer a part of after leaving in March of this year.

Back in April of 2016 we published a story about ReVive when it first rose to popularity. As a result, Oculus’ PR team responded stating that, “This is a hack, and we don’t condone it. Users should expect that hacked games won’t work indefinitely, as regular software updates to games, apps, and our platform are likely to break hacked software.”

That very next month a new update to Oculus Home blocked ReVive access, which was eventually remedied with Oculus even reportedly working to increase compatibility with the likes of ReVive.

As it stands it’s unclear whether or not this relatively small donation is a sign of any growing support he may have for ReVive or any other non-Oculus products and software. CrossVR’s Patreon is set up so that the account receives funds on a monthly basis, so it’s likely that this constitutes an ongoing monthly pledge that will recur.

We’ve reached out to Luckey for confirmation on the donation coming from him and will update this story once we know more.

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