OpenXR is an open,

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

standard for access to

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

and

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

platforms and devices. It is developed by a

working group A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...

managed by the

Khronos Group The Khronos Group, Inc. is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of 170 organizations developing, publishing and maintaining royalty-free interoperability standards for 3D graphics, virtual reality, augmented reality, parallel computation ...

consortium. OpenXR was announced by the Khronos Group on February 27, 2017 during GDC 2017. A provisional version of the standard was released on March 18, 2019 to enable developers and implementers to provide feedback on it. On July 29, 2019, OpenXR 1.0 was released to the public by Khronos Group at SIGGRAPH 2019. Reviewers of the 0.90 provisional release considered that the aim of OpenXR was to "Solve AR/VR Fragmentation".

Architecture

The standard provides an API aimed for application developers targeting

hardware. This enables developers to build applications that will work across a wide variety of devices. The fundamental elements of this API are:
XrSpace
a representation of the

3D space Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informal ...

XrInstance
a representation of the OpenXR runtime

an

a representation of the devices, including the Virtual reality or

Augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

devices and controllers
XrActions
used to handle user inputs

represents the interaction session between the application and the user

Implementations

The

maintains the list of OpenXR-conformant platforms and products. Currently conformant OpenXR platforms are: * Microsoft HoloLens 2 and the Windows Mixed Reality headsets *

Oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

br>PC platform
and the

Quest A quest is a journey toward a specific mission or a goal. The word serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction: a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Tales of quests figure prominently in the folklore of ever ...

/ Quest2 devices, with full support OpenXR 1.0 added in July 2021 * Collaborabr>Monado Runtime for GNU/Linux
with the release of version 21.0.0 in February 2021 * Valve SteamVR, since version 1.16 in February 2021 * HTC VIVE Cosmos and VIVE Focus 3, part of HTC’s VIVERSE ecosystem * Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform Preview and early development releases of OpenXR are available for the following platforms:
Varjo
PC platform, with a first release in July 2019

Game and rendering engine support

Support for OpenXR application development can be found in the following engines: * Unreal Engine, with initial support in the 4.23 release from September 2019 * Blender, with initial support in the 2.83 LTS release from June 2020 * Unity, with initial support in the 2020.2 release from December 2020 * Godot, with initial support in the 3.3 release from July 2021

Browser support

* Google

Chrome Chrome may refer to: Materials * Chrome plating, a process of surfacing with chromium * Chrome alum, a chemical used in mordanting and photographic film Computing * Google Chrome, a web browser developed by Google ** ChromeOS, a Google Chrome- ...

and Microsoft Edge web browsers both enabl
WebXR
support using OpenXR by default using the

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...

code base

Roadmap

After the release of OpenXR 1.0, progress will likely be driven through the development of extensions to the core API. This can be seen in the subsequent release of extensions for support of hand tracking and eye gaze tracking. As implementers and developers get more experience with the extensions, they could get integrated into the core OpenXR API in future releases.

Contributors

The following companies are listed by Khronos as public supporters of OpenXR:

References

External links

OpenXR 1.0 specification
{{Virtual reality and Augmented reality 3D graphics APIs Application programming interfaces Graphics standards Video game development Video game engines Virtual reality