OpenXR-SDK by Khronos Group: Powering the Future of XR Applications
With the rapid adoption of immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), a need has emerged for unified standards to ensure compatibility and interoperability across multiple hardware platforms. Addressing this need is the OpenXR-SDK, a notable project on GitHub developed by the Khronos Group. It aims to create open and royalty-free standards for these applications, serving as the groundwork for the growth and expansion of the XR industry.
Project Overview:
OpenXR-SDK is a project created with the objective of facilitating a cross-platform API that promotes a high-performance, royalty-free standard for VR, AR, and MR platforms and devices (collectively known as XR). The goal is to resolve fragmentation issues in the XR industry and foster widespread adoption of immersive technology. It serves hardware manufacturers, developers, and consumers engaged in XR, providing a consistent API that is both reliable and efficient.
Project Features:
The core feature of OpenXR-SDK is its open standard for access to VR, AR, and MR platforms and devices. With this unified interface, developers can write code that runs on any system that supports the OpenXR standard, eliminating the costly and time-consuming process of writing different codes for each platform. The project also includes runtime and loader implementations for use with OpenXR API headers. In practice, using OpenXR standard could enable a single game or application to function across multiple VR/AR platforms without needing platform-specific modifications.
Technology Stack:
OpenXR-SDK is written primarily in C++, a language chosen for its performance advantage and compatibility with hardware devices. It uses modern CMake as its primary build system for ease of use and flexibility. Python is also utilized for scripts and data extraction from XML. The OpenXR-SDK also includes Khronos official headers, which are automatic extracts from the OpenXR XML API Registry.
Project Structure and Architecture:
The OpenXR-SDK follows a clear and comprehensible structure, starting with the OpenXR APIs. These APIs are grouped under include\openxr directory, where path convention follows the OpenXR headers. The source code has a modular architecture with separation of concerns and readability in mind. For example, headers for extensions are modular and separately located under the include\openxr directory.
