OpenXR


OpenXR is an open, royalty-free standard for access to virtual reality and augmented reality platforms and devices. It is developed by a working group managed by the Khronos Group 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 aims to eventually provide two components: an API aimed for application developers, and a device layer aimed for the virtual reality or augmented reality hardware, presenting an abstraction interface with the device itself.
The fundamental elements of this API are:
The 1.0 API allows with the OpenXR runtimes to support devices by implementing specific Device Layer plugins.
The way a Device Layer is intended to work is by intercepting OpenXR functions from Layers above. For example a Validation Layer for a specific runtime can check that the API is used correctly before sending the API calls to the hardware.

Runtimes

The currently released OpenXR Runtimes are:
In March 2017, the Khronos Group tentatively planned to release the first version of the API in late 2018. The API was released in March 2020 as a provisional release, with a plugin device interface being planned for post-1.0 releases. In July 29, 2019, OpenXR 1.0 was released to the public by Khronos Group.

Contributors

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