Bei OpenXR handelt es sich um einen Standard, welcher das Entwickeln für unterschiedliche XR-Plattformen vereinfachen soll. Die Software setzt sich zwischen Engine, Plattform und Headset und soll dafür sorgen, dass jede Software auf jedem XR-Headset ohne Anpassung funktioniert. Zumindest in der Theorie.
OpenXR 1.0 veröffentlicht
OpenXR befindet sich bereits seit April 2017 in Entwicklung und viele große VR- und AR-Hersteller unterstützen das Projekt. Heute kündigt die Khronos Group, welche die Entwicklung des Standards leitet, die Veröffentlichung der Version 1.0 an, welche komplett abwärtskompatibel sein soll.
Doch auch wenn OpenXR in einigen Fällen eine Portierung überflüssig machen könnte, bedeutet dies nicht, dass zukünftig alle VR-Spiele auf allen Plattformen laufen werden. Exklusive Titel werden also auch weiterhin exklusiv bleiben, wenn es bestimmte Deals zwischen den Plattformen und den Studios gibt.
OpenXR 1.0 ist ab sofort kostenlos auf GitHub erhältlich. Microsoft bietet bereits einen Support für Windows Mixed Reality und HoloLens an und auch die Unreal Engine wird demnächst Version 1.0 unterstützen. Oculus, Unity, HTC, Valve und viele weitere Unternehmen möchten zukünftig OpenXR unterstützen, aber aktuell steht der Zeitpunkt noch nicht fest.
OpenXR, a widely supported initiative which aims to streamline AR/VR development across headsets and platforms, has reached its 1.0 release today. It’s a major milestone, according to Khronos Group which has overseen development of the standard by a consortium of many of the biggest names in the AR/VR sector.
OpenXR is a royalty-free standard that aims to unify the underlying connections between VR and AR hardware, game engines, and content, making for a more interoperable ecosystem. The standard has been in development since April 2017 and is presently supported by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the VR industry, including key AR players like Magic Leap. OpenXR’s ‘working group’, under which representatives from member companies have been actively developing the standard, is facilitated by Khronos Group.
Today the group announced the release of OpenXR 1.0, representing the first production-ready version of the standard. Khronos Group says that from 1.0 forward, OpenXR will retain “full backwards compatibility […], giving software developers and hardware vendors a solid foundation upon which to deliver incredible, portable, user experiences.”
OpenXR has both an application interface (which sits between an XR app and platform), and a device interface (which sits between the platform and the headset). Building apps, platforms, and headsets which singularly target the OpenXR standard (instead of a myriad of proprietary interfaces) makes for a significantly more interoperable ecosystem.
Image courtesy Khronos Group
For instance, it means that an app built for one OpenXR headset should run on an entirely different OpenXR headset with zero changes to the underlying code. Additionally, it means that a new entrant to the game engine market could swiftly add support for all compatible headsets by implementing support for OpenXR, instead of dozens of individual headset runtimes.
Granted, OpenXR does not necessarily mean that apps and content from one platform will work with a headset from another. Each company, even if a supporter of OpenXR, still has control over where their content is made available and which platforms support which headsets. Simply put, OpenXR is a technical foundation for interoperability, but business decisions still dictate content, device, and platform strategy.
Other companies who are officially part of the group responsible for developing OpenXR—like AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, HTC, Valve, Unity, and others—voiced support for the 1.0 release of OpenXR but haven’t yet announced a timeline for their own implementations.
To help grow and support the growing virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industries, The Khronos Group and its affiliates have been working on the OpenXR standard since 2016. Today, the consortium has announced the launch of the 1.0 OpenXR specification.
The public release of the OpenXR specification creates a unifying, royalty-free, open standard for cross-platform access between XR platforms and devices. This makes it far easier for software developers or hardware manufacturers who support the ecosystem to build products that work across devices, allowing for less fragmentation and therefore less confusion for consumers looking to invest in XR technology.
“The working group is excited to launch the 1.0 version of the OpenXR specification, and the feedback from the community on the provisional specification released in March has been invaluable to getting us to this significant milestone,” said Brent Insko, OpenXR working group chair and lead XR architect at Intel in a statement. “Our work continues as we now finalize a comprehensive test suite, integrate key game engine support, and plan the next set of features to evolve a truly vibrant, cross-platform standard for XR platforms and devices. Now is the time for software developers to start putting OpenXR to work.”
Khronos launched the provisional OpenXR 0.90 spec during the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2019, gathering feedback from the XR community to improve the OpenXR input subsystem, game engine editor support, and loader. Version 1.0 will continue to evolve the standard while maintaining full backwards compatibility, with Khronos member companies continuing ecosystem support via additional implementations. These include ‘Monado’ OpenXR from Collabora, the OpenXR runtime for Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Microsoft, an Oculus Rift implementation, Unreal Engine support from Epic Games and Oculus Quest support.
“OpenXR is an important milestone for VR. This API will allow games and other applications to work easily across a variety of hardware platforms without proprietary SDKs,” said Joe Ludwig, programmer at Valve. “Valve is happy to have worked closely with other VR industry leaders to create this open standard, and looks forward to supporting it in SteamVR.”
“We’re thrilled to support the OpenXR 1.0 release, along with all of the Khronos Group members who have worked tirelessly to create the standard. Unreal Engine led the way with support for the OpenXR 0.9 provisional specification, and we’re excited to move the 1.0 revision forward in collaboration with our hardware partners releasing at the same time. Epic believes that open standards are essential to driving technology and bridging the gaps between digital ecosystems,” adds Jules Blok, Epic Games.
OpenXR members Epic Games, Microsoft and Varjo will be holding demonstrations using the OpenXR API at SIGGRAPH 2019 this week. The new specification can be found on the Khronos website and via GitHub. For further updates keep reading VRFocus.
An effort to standardize certain aspects of VR and AR applications gains wide industry support today with the release of version 1.0 of the OpenXR specification.
The cross-platform OpenXR application programming interface is poised to simplify the deployment of VR and AR applications across a wide range of systems. Microsoft already released an OpenXR runtime for Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Oculus is releasing its own implementation, according to the Khronos Group, and Epic Games will support OpenXR with its Unreal Engine toolset. There’s also an open source implementation available as well.
Chart provided by the Khronos Group showing the intended benefits of OpenXR.
“This API will allow games and other applications to work easily across a variety of hardware platforms without proprietary SDKs,” said Valve’s Joe Ludwig in a prepared statement. “Valve is happy to have worked closely with other VR industry leaders to create this open standard, and looks forward to supporting it in SteamVR.”
The API covers view configuration, the handling of layers, how to track real and virtual objects and their relative motion, and more. At SIGGRAPH Epic, Microsoft and Varjo are showing cross-platform XR applications using the same OpenXR API.
“The working group is excited to launch the 1.0 version of the OpenXR specification, and the feedback from the community on the provisional specification released in March has been invaluable to getting us to this significant milestone,” said Brent Insko, OpenXR working group chair and lead XR architect at Intel, in a prepared statement. “Our work continues as we now finalize a comprehensive test suite, integrate key game engine support, and plan the next set of features to evolve a truly vibrant, cross-platform standard for XR platforms and devices. Now is the time for software developers to start putting OpenXR to work.”
You have been invited to join a movement. A rebel cause to make the future a stranger, freer, more interesting place. A place where people, applications, games, all intersect and intermingle seamlessly around us in unlimited configurations. Where the barriers between VR and AR dissolve and our virtual worlds and augmentations can seamlessly intermingle. A place without central ownership or one-size-fits-all rules for existence.
To get there, all we need to do is remove the barriers that exist between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and let them become one thing.
Come again?
Augmenting Any Reality
Check out this video:
What you’re seeing here is Pokemon Go’s AR mode augmenting Skyrim VR. Augmented Virtual Reality. This isn’t some crazy hack with kitbashing and emulation. We simply put the iPhone’s camera up to a VR headset’s lens and tricked the phone into thinking Skyrim was reality. This works for any ARKit and ARCore app today in any virtual reality.
AR Apps augment whatever reality is given to them. They don’t care whether they’re augmenting real or virtual reality.
Every single AR app made today should run great by augmenting virtual worlds instead of the real one (with possibly the exception of AR navigation apps, but even those have a use in VR — they just need to be provided different data).
Why Do This?
About half of the people we tell this to are already on board. The other half ask “Why?”. Why would you augment a virtual world? What does that do for you?
Here are some anecdotal answers:
I want to climb up a mountain in Skyrim and find a Pokemon Gym on top that I can conquer by calling up friends and having them also launch Skyrim and climb that mountain so we can take it down together. The augmentation adds a new social motivation to do something in the virtual world.
I want to bring my virtual pet with me when I explore new worlds.
I can invite my friends to join me as augmentations and give them a tour of my house in Minecraft.
I can add my own body or parts of my house into any VR experience as an augmentation.
Here’s my less anecdotal answer:
Any value from augmenting the real world carries over to virtual ones.
Right now there are millions of VR headsets ready to be augmented. That’s a market much larger than AR headsets today. Even phone AR apps can run in virtual worlds.
It’s easier to augment virtual worlds because virtual worlds are already software, and we can get direct access to game information. In the real world we have to painfully, expensively, and often erroneously reconstruct information from camera pixels and other sensors. This means the quality of augmentations in VR will always be better than augmentations in the real world.
When augmenting virtual worlds, we can give our augmentation real power and agency to interact and make changes to the world. Each virtual world can choose how much access the augmentations should have. My virtual cat can fight alongside me in Gorn!
Point 4 above is the really exciting one for me. Current AR is cosmetic only and lacks any agency. I like to think of it like VR without hand controllers. Without hands, you can look at VR and react to it, but you can’t touch it. You are merely an observer. When you augment the real world, your augmentations can look at and eventually observe the real world, but they will never be able to touch it. When you bring your augmentations into VR, it’s like giving hands to your augmentations. Augmentations in VR can be more than just cosmetic!
How does this Protect Against Central Ownership?
I promised we were making the future a stranger, freer place without central ownership. How does Augmenting Virtual Reality do that?
Well, this year major platforms started adopting the OpenXR standard for both VR and AR apps. Runtimes that implement OpenXR have the opportunity to support overlays. I believe Unity and Unreal Engine can both eventually provide 1-click solutions to package your existing AR apps as a native VR overlay. This would dramatically increase the addressable market with AR apps.
This means that, soon, VR apps could start providing overlay interaction APIs to give agency to your augmentations. All AR and VR experiences can be split into environments and augmentations that all share a collection of common APIs for interaction. Note that one possible background for augmentation is the real world. Another is the Skyrim world. And the “metaverse” is just that collection of cross-compatible backgrounds and augmentations.. When we join a friend for a game, we pick a background to meet up in (whether a spot on earth, or a virtual environment) and bring the augmentations that make sense there. Sometimes the background we meet up in will be the real world, and the augmentations we bring will likely be cosmetic only, at least most of the time.
No one owns these interaction APIs, and so no one company will own everything. There’s no one-size-fits-all metaverse, and instead we all get to build whatever world we each want in a socially compatible way. There is no central ownership where an insane man can arbitrarily give control to whatever kid knows the most obscure ’80s references.
The OpenXR standard announced at GDC is an incredible step toward making this weird future come true. It provides a solid foundation to start building these sorts of experiences now. But the standard is still being created and we can all help guide it together to ensure a future we want to live in!
Call to Action
Platform holders such as Oculus, Valve, Google, Microsoft, and Magic Leap need to implement the OpenXR standard, especially the part about overlays and RGB-depth information. These extensions are the foundation that allows us to augment our virtual worlds.
With Unreal Engine and Unity, we don’t just want to augment virtual worlds – we want it to be easy. Those teams already have (or are working on) a unified framework for making AR apps independent of underlying AR technology. Extend that framework to also give developers that same information in VR for overlays! It really can be as easy for developerssas switching their target to “OpenXR Overlay on PC” instead of “ARCore Android App”!
Niantic should create a PC or VR overlay that lets me catch Pokemon in Skyrim. You should be able to do this without Bethesda’s permission since augmented overlays are already a protected form of art (see Rifftrax for an example where they augment movies with an audio overlay without permission).
Game Developers can then create augmented layers as a cool way to connect all sorts of video game worlds, not just Pokemon and Skyrim. I single out Pokemon Go here but, you could also find Breath of the Wild korok seeds in God of War, Minecraft diamonds in Fortnite, etc.
Some overlay applications for VR already exist such as OVRDrop and Pluto VR. So AR and VR developers should take the time to consider whether your app can be broken up into a background and one or more augmentations. Take my app SculptrVR for example: I now think of it as a sculpting augmentation with a simple skybox background. As soon as possible, I will package it as an OpenXR overlay so that people can sculpt in Skyrim.
This is how we immunize the future from central control and one-size-fits-all rules for existence. Let’s build a freer and more interesting future together!
#AugmentAnything
About the authors: Nathan Rowe is the founder of SculptrVR. SculptrVR is multi-platform, multi-player, multi-scale volumetric sculpting application with 10,000x zoom and also rockets..? Nathan does all of the voxel engine code for SculptrVR, and his dreams are full of octrees. Jared Cheshier is the CTO and co-founder of Pluto and member of the OpenXR working group. Pluto is a spatial communications company with the purpose to help humanity transcend physical location. Pluto has two clients, the PlutoVR alpha and an alpha for iOS devices with TrueDepth cameras.
Die Khronos Group vereint seit 2017 die größten Unternehmen der AR- und VR-Branche, um einen gemeinsamen XR-Standard festzulegen. Nun veröffentlichen die Verantwortlichen eine neue 0.9 Version, die als Vorreiter zu Testzwecken für VR-Devs bereitsteht. Basierend auf dem Feedback der VR-Experten soll daraufhin die finale Version 1.0 innerhalb dieses Jahres erscheinen.
OpenXR – Version 0.9 des XR-Standards veröffentlicht, Finale Version folgt noch 2019
Die Khronos Group, das Konsortium führender Hard- und Software-Unternehmen, veröffentlicht offiziell die OpenXR 0.9-Version und gibt somit die ersten, vorläufigen Spezifikationen und Ratifikationen für den zukünftigen XR-Standard bekannt.
OpenXR soll einen gemeinsamen, einheitlichen und lizenzfreien Standard bereitstellen, um Devs die Möglichkeit zu geben, Software für unterschiedliche VR-Endgeräte zu entwickeln bzw. diese, dank einer plattformübergreifenden API zu portieren. Das Ziel des Projekts ist es, die Branchenfragmentierung der XR-Industrie dauerhaft zu reduzieren.
Image courtesy: Khronos Group | via: Road to VR
So schreibt Brent Insko, leitender VR-Architekt von Intel und Leiter der OpenXR-Arbeitsgruppe:
“OpenXR zielt darauf ab, die AR-/VR-Software-Entwicklung zu vereinfachen, indem es Anwendungen in die Lage versetzt, eine größere Anzahl von Hardware-Plattformen zu erreichen, ohne ihren Code portieren oder neu schreiben zu müssen, und es Plattformanbietern ermöglicht, die OpenXR-Zugriff auf weitere Anwendungen unterstützen. Die vorläufige OpenXR-Spezifikation wird, zusammen mit den bei Markteinführung öffentlich verfügbaren und in den nächsten Wochen kommenden Runtimes, praktische, plattformübergreifende Tests durch App- und Engine-Entwickler ermöglichen. Die Arbeitsgruppe begrüßt das Feedback der Entwickler, um eine OpenXR 1.0-Spezifikation zu gewährleisten, die den Anforderungen der XR-Branche wirklich gerecht wird.”
Die vorläufige 0.9-Version soll nun zu Testzwecken von XR-Entwicklern genutzt werden, um Feedback für die finale 1.0 Version zu sammeln. Basierend auf der Rückmeldung der XR-Implementierer soll schließlich der Feinschliff für die Endvariante stattfinden. Die finale Endfassung der OpenXR soll noch 2019 erscheinen.
Um den OpenXR-Standard für AR und VR durchzusetzen, unterstützen namenhafte Vertreter, wie Oculus, Valve, Unity, Epic, Samsung, Sony, Google, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Magic Leap und HTC das Projekt.
Image courtesy: Khronos Group
Zeitgleich mit dem vorläufigen Release veröffentlicht Microsoft eine OpenXR-Runtime, um den neuen Standard mit Windows-VR-Brillen kompatibel zu machen. Support für die kommende HoloLens 2 soll ebenso zeitnah folgen. Auch Oculus soll noch in diesem Jahr eine passende Runtime-Unterstützung für Oculus Rift und Oculus Quest bereitstellen. Das Unternehmen Collabora kündigte zudem eine Open-Source SDK für Linux an.
.Ever since the Khronos Group announced back in 2016 plans to have an open standard for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices called OpenXR, the initiative has garnered more and more support. With the first public demos showcased at SIGGRAPH last year, for the start of the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2019 the group has publicly launched the OpenXR 0.90 provisional specification.
The whole purpose of OpenXR is to solve the issue of fragmentation within the VR/AR ecosystems – commonly referred to as XR – allowing developers to easily port content to a range of devices without having to spend serious amounts of time dealing with each their particular software issues.
As this is version 0.90 of OpenXR it’s not the final version, merely a provisional release so that Khronos Group can correlate feedback from users. OpenXR 0.90 specifies a cross-platform Application Programming Interface (API) so that platform vendor’s expose the functionality of their runtime systems, which can frustratingly different across existing vendor-specific APIs.
“OpenXR seeks to simplify AR/VR software development, enabling applications to reach a wider array of hardware platforms without having to port or re-write their code and subsequently allowing platform vendors supporting OpenXR access to more applications,” said Brent Insko, lead VR architect at Intel and OpenXR working group chair. “The OpenXR provisional specification—together with the runtimes publicly available at launch and coming in the next few weeks—will enable hands-on, cross-platform testing by application and engine developers. The working group welcomes developer feedback to ensure an OpenXR 1.0 specification that truly meets the needs of the XR industry.”
Advocates of the OpenXR standard range across the industry, from Google and Epic Games to Magic Leap and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
“Epic believes that open standards like OpenXR are essential foundations for a vibrant, multi-platform VR and AR industry in the coming years. We’ve supported OpenXR since its inception, including powering the first public demo of OpenXR at SIGGRAPH last year, and hope to see the ecosystem continue to grow with the first public release of the spec at GDC,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. “Epic plans to continue supporting OpenXR in Unreal Engine 4.”
“Facebook and Oculus continue to believe in the value the OpenXR standard delivers to users and developers. We plan to provide runtime support for apps built on OpenXR 1.0 on the Rift and Quest platforms later this year,” Nate Mitchell, Oculus Co-founder and head of VR product, Facebook adds.
The new specification can be found on the Khronos website. For further updates on OpenXR, keep reading VRFocus.
,The OpenXR specification and application programming interface is public for the first time today.
The 0.90 provisional OpenXR specification provides a standardized interface between virtual worlds and the devices which track movement as well as render and display those worlds. The Khronos Group, which is releasing the standard for developer and industry feedback, is broadly supported by companies invested in AR and VR technologies.
Multiple implementations of the specification are available today. An open source implementation called ‘Monado’ from Collabora is launching. There is also a developer preview of the OpenXR runtime from Microsoft for VR headsets using its tracking technology.
“Competing proprietary standards don’t inspire confidence in the consumer to invest,” said Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Working Group. Now, “there’s no longer an engineering reason why applications can’t be deployed on any HMD that supports OpenXR.”
OpenXR = Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality
OpenXR carries broad industry support. This chart from the Khronos Group shows groups supporting the standard as of March 2019.
Representatives from a number of companies working in VR and AR voiced their support for the standard today. They include Facebook, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, HTC and Intel. Microsoft is “dedicated to supporting the launch of OpenXR this year on Windows Mixed Reality and HoloLens 2,” Technical Fellow Alex Kipman said in a prepared statement.
“Facebook and Oculus continue to believe in the value the OpenXR standard delivers to users and developers. We plan to provide runtime support for apps built on OpenXR 1.0 on the Rift and Quest platforms later this year,” said Nate Mitchell, Oculus Co-founder and head of VR product, Facebook, in a prepared statement.
Development timeline of OpenXR through March 2019.
Next Steps
Last year at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference headsets with widely varying specifications ran the same OpenXR application. That’s the ultimate promise of the standard — simplifying cross-platform development and allowing for a single application to run on a wide range of devices. SIGGRAPH was also the last major milestone for the standard before today’s release.
OpenXR can be used with Vulkan for high-performance rendering as well as other 3D APIs like Direct3D and OpenGL. You can find the new specification on the Khronos website and dig through the documentation.
Watch for updates from UploadVR as we track the roll-out of OpenXR over the course of the year.
OpenXR is a royalty-free standard for cross-platform VR and AR development. It’s backed by many of the biggest names in the VR and AR industries and has been in development by the consortium for two years now, organized by Khronos Group. The group today announced the ratification of OpenXR 0.9, a provisional version of the specification, which is now available for feedback from developers and implementers.
OpenXR is a work-in-progress standard that aims to unify the underlying connections between VR and AR hardware, game engines, and content, making for a more interoperable ecosystem. The standard has been in development since April 2017 and is presently supported by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the VR industry, including key AR players like Magic Leap. OpenXR’s ‘working group’, under which representatives from member companies are actively developing the standard, is facilitated by Khronos Group.
Image courtesy Khronos Group
Today the group announced the ratification and release of OpenXR 0.9, a provisional version meant for evaluation by developers and implementers in the industry. The OpenXR working group plans to gather feedback to put the finishing touches on the standard before releasing OpenXR 1.0.
Along with the provisional release of the specification, Microsoft is releasing an OpenXR runtime for testing, which can enable OpenXR content compatibility with Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
Oculus says they plan to provide runtime support for apps built for OpenXR on Rift and Quest later this year.
Collabora, an open-source consulting company, is today releasing Monado, an open-source SDK and runtime built for OpenXR on Linux.
Image courtesy Khronos Group
OpenXR has both an application interface which sits between an XR app and platform, and a device interface which sits between the platform and the headset. Building apps, platforms, and headsets which target the OpenXR standard (instead of a proprietary interfaces) makes for a significantly more interoperable ecosystem.
For instance, it means that an app built for one OpenXR headset should run on an entirely different OpenXR headset with zero changes to the underlying code. Additionally, it means that a new entrant to the game engine market could swiftly add support for all compatible headsets by implementing support for OpenXR.
Granted, OpenXR does not necessarily mean that apps and content from one platform will work with a headset from another. Each company, even if a supporter of OpenXR, still has control over where their content is made available and which platforms support which headsets. Simply put, OpenXR is a technical foundation for interoperability, but business decisions still dictate content, device, and platform strategy.
Intel’s Brent Insko has taken over as the Chair of the OpenXR working group after Epic’s Nick Whiting passed the torch. The pair say the OpenXR effort is still going strong, and a progress update is planned for March.
OpenXR is a work-in-progress standard that aims to unify the underlying connections between VR and AR hardware, game engines, and content, making for a more interoperable ecosystem. The standard has been in development since April 2017 and is presently supported by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the VR industry, including key AR players like Magic Leap. OpenXR’s ‘working group’, under which representatives from member companies are actively developing the standard, is facilitated by Khronos Group.
Image courtesy Khronos Group
The OpenXR working group has been chaired from the start by Nick Whiting from game & engine maker Epic Games. Citing additional responsibilities in his role at Epic, Whiting tells Road to VR that he stepped down as chair in late 2018, though the company is still fully committed to OpenXR.
“I’m honored to have had the opportunity to serve as the chair of Khronos’ OpenXR working group for just shy of two years. Upon taking on a number of new initiatives at Epic Games, I saw a clear opportunity to pass the torch, and the group elected Brent Insko of Intel as the new chair when he stepped up to answer the call,” says Whiting. “The spec is in great hands with Brent and the OpenXR working group, and Epic remains just as committed as ever to the standard. We’re continuing to actively participate in all the [OpenXR] working group online and in-person meetings, and of course, continuing work to add support for OpenXR to Unreal Engine 4.”
Taking over as Chair of the OpenXR working group is Brent Insko, Lead Software Architect at Intel’s Virtual Reality Group. Inkso has been part of the group since its inception.
“[I want to] first thank Nick for his leadership of the group and getting us this far. As the newly elected chair, I’m excited by the opportunity to help drive OpenXR to its initial release and beyond,” Insko says. “The 30+ member companies continue working feverishly to deliver a specification that removes the major complications of writing portable VR and AR applications.”
In August 2018, members of the OpenXR working group presented a detailed overview of the OpenXR architecture. The group also showed the first live demo of OpenXR in action. Built with Unreal Engine using an OpenXR plugin, Epic’s ‘Showdown’ demo, was shown running on both a Windows Mixed Reality headset and a StarVR headset.
Image courtesy Khronos Group
This showed one of the core elements of OpenXR: that developers can design their applications around a single API, and have it run on multiple headsets without dealing with multiple vendor-specific APIs. Conversely, a hardware maker targeting the OpenXR standard could count on the ability to tap into a body of existing OpenXR content, lowering the barrier to entry into the market, and expanding choices for consumers.
“Our Showdown demo running on OpenXR with Windows Mixed Reality and StarVR headsets was just the beginning, and we remain fully committed to OpenXR as the defining open standard for XR,” Epic’s Nick Whiting tells Road to VR.
Indeed, Intel’s Brent Insko says that the OpenXR working group plans to provide a progress update on development of the standard at the Khronos Developer Day on March 19th at GDC 2019.
