Supported by many major companies, the initiative established for the development of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies and standards recently released the OpenXR 1.0 version.

OpenXR is a royalty-free standard that aims to unify the foundational connection between VR and AR hardware, game engines, and content, and to create an interoperable ecosystem. The standard has been in development since April 2017 and is currently supported by almost every major hardware, platform, and software company in the VR industry, including key AR players like Magic Leap. For the development of OpenXR, representatives from member companies under the Khronos Group play an active role in the development of the standard.

OpenXR includes both an application interface (between an XR application and the platform) and a device interface (between the platform and the headset). The OpenXR standard creates an ecosystem to make applications, platforms, and VR/AR headsets significantly more interoperable (instead of numerous custom interfaces).

For example, this means that an application built for a VR/AR reality headset running OpenXR can run on a completely different OpenXR headset with zero changes to the underlying code. Additionally, it means that a newcomer to the game engine market can quickly add support for all compatible headsets by implementing OpenXR support instead of dozens of individual headset runtimes.

However, OpenXR does not mean that applications and content on one platform will work with another’s VR/AR headset. Every company, even if they are an OpenXR supporter, will be able to control where their content is located and which platforms will support it. Simply put, OpenXR is a technical foundation for interoperability, but companies’ own strategies will determine content, device, and platform usage.

OpenXR 1.0 can be accessed via GitHub , and it is also possible to download the technical reference guide published by the Khronos Group through their own website.