Khronos Group releases early OpenXR spec for AR and VR hardware standards

The Khronos Group has announced the ratification and public release of the OpenXR 0.90 provisional specification for royalty-free standards related to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality VR devices, collectively known as XR.This means that software makers will know how to make software that runs quickly and efficiently on various kinds of VR and AR hardware. The Khronos Group released the specification at the start of the 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today. The new specification is available on the Khronos website and is released in provisional form to enable developers and implementers to provide feedback through the OpenXR forum. The OpenXR 0.90 provisional release specifies a cross-platform application programming interface (API) enabling XR hardware platform vendors to expose the functionality of their runtime systems. By accessing a common set of objects and functions corresponding to application lifecycle, rendering, tracking, frame timing, and input, which are frustratingly different across existing vendor-specific APIs, software developers can run their applications across multiple XR systems with minimal porting effort — significantly reducing industry fragmentation.