The Khronos Group released OpenXR 0.9 provisional at GDC back in March. We reported on the story when it happened. At the time, several industry players voiced their support for the platform, although we noted some key omissions. First, while Oculus released a statement that claimed they will support OpenXR after 1.0 releases later in the year, Valve was nowhere to be seen. HTC Vive released a statement on their own.
Today, The Khronos Group published OpenXR 1.0. The time for feedback is over. Microsoft, Varjo, and Epic Games will have a presentation at the Khronos OpenXR Birds of a Feather (BOF) talk, which occurs at 1pm PDT (4pm EDT) on July 31st. The event will be livestreamed.
Several implementations are available alongside this release. The PC VR vendors include Collabora, Microsoft, and Oculus. Epic Games will add the specification to their engine soon and, like last time, added a little quote to The Khronos Group’s announcement. Valve added a quote to the press release to pledge support for OpenXR at some point in the future. Brandon Jones, who maintains the WebXR at Google, also pledged support for OpenXR as it handles some of their web-based sibling standard for free.
To learn more, check out the website. The spec will also be available on GitHub.
Might be nice to have a summary paragraph about what OpenXR is.
It helps with the XR fragmentation 😉
Ah sorry. It’s an interface between VR software and VR hardware. If software and hardware both implement the interface, then they can communicate with each other. Because it is managed by The Khronos Group, any software and any hardware can target it for instant compatibility. You don’t have to write your game for Oculus, SteamVR, Daydream, Windows Mixed Reality, etc., individually. You just need to write your game for OpenXR, and you suddenly get all OpenXR-compatible hardware. The reverse is also true for the hardware to have access to all of that software.
Thank you, sir!