Khronos Releases OpenXR 1.0 Specification Establishing a Foundation for the AR and VR Ecosystem

Final specifications and shipping implementations freely available today; Growing adoption from XR industry and expanding ecosystem support

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AR–Today, The Khronos^® Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies creating advanced acceleration standards, announces the ratification and public release of the OpenXR™ 1.0 specification together with publicly available implementations and substantial ecosystem momentum. OpenXR is a unifying, royalty-free, open standard that provides high-performance, cross-platform access to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)— collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. The new specification can be found on the Khronos website and via GitHub.

“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. “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.”

After gathering feedback from the XR community during the public review of the provisional specification, improvements were made to the OpenXR input subsystem, game engine editor support, and loader. With this 1.0 release, the working group will evolve the standard while maintaining full backwards compatibility from this point onward, giving software developers and hardware vendors a solid foundation upon which to deliver incredible, portable, user experiences.

Together with the specification release, OpenXR is receiving continued ecosystem support from Khronos member companies. OpenXR implementations from members are shipping this week, including the ‘Monado’ OpenXR open source implementation from Collabora, the OpenXR runtime for Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Microsoft, an Oculus OpenXR implementation for Rift, as well as Oculus Quest support coming upon ratification of OpenXR 1.0. Epic Games also plans to release OpenXR 1.0 support in Unreal Engine.

At SIGGRAPH 2019, OpenXR members Epic Games, Microsoft and Varjo will demonstrate XR applications targeting distinct VR and AR platforms, all while using the same OpenXR API, demonstrating how the standard reduces industry fragmentation through application portability. The demonstrations will take place during the OpenXR Birds of a Feather (BOF) presentation at 1:00 p.m. on July 31, as well as during the Khronos Networking Reception taking place at 5:30 p.m. on July 31. No passes are required for either event and all are welcome to attend.

Industry Support for OpenXR 1.0 Specification

For a full list of industry supporters, including AMD, Arm, CTRL-Labs, NVIDIA, Pluto VR, Varjo, and Tobii in addition to the ones below this link.

“As part of its unwavering commitment to open source and open standards, Collabora is proud to be part of bringing OpenXR 1.0 to life. We are pioneering the Monado open source runtime for OpenXR to ensure the future of XR is truly open and accessible to all hardware vendors. As the OpenXR specification editor, I am grateful for the diligent efforts of the working group, as well as the community feedback that shaped this release,” said Ryan Pavlik, OpenXR Specification Editor, XR Principal Software Engineer at Collabora.

“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,” said Jules Blok, Epic Games.

“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,” said Nate Mitchell, Oculus Co-founder and head of VR product, Facebook.

“HTC VIVE is committed to creating a viable ecosystem for the XR industry which is why we are proud to support OpenXR,” said Vinay Narayan, vice president, platform strategy, HTC. “Bringing the community together to help define standards and best practices, allows all of us to move forward, together.”

“The mobile era of computing was defined and ultimately constrained by closed ecosystems. With mixed reality, the next wave of computing must be and will be open,” said Don Box, Technical Fellow at Microsoft. “Today, Microsoft is proud to release the first OpenXR 1.0 runtime that supports mixed reality, for all Windows Mixed Reality and HoloLens 2 users. We are excited to now work with the OpenXR community to design the key extensions that will bring mixed reality to life, with full support by end of year for HoloLens 2 hand tracking, eye tracking, spatial mapping and spatial anchors.”

“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. 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,” said Joe Ludwig, programmer at Valve.

About the Khronos Group

The Khronos Group is an open industry consortium of over 140 leading hardware and software companies creating advanced, royalty-free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, vision and machine learning.

Contacts

Khronos Group Press:

Alex Crabb, Caster Communications Inc.

alex@castercomm.com

401-792-7080