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Facebook will deprecate its proprietary Oculus APIs in favor of the OpenXR standard.
Facebook says the new features “will be delivered through OpenXR extensions” starting in v31, echoing Valve’s language version last year regarding new features on SteamVR also being connected to OpenXR.
According to Facebook, in August 2022, existing Oculus Native Mobile and PC APIs will become “unsupported,” meaning “existing apps will continue to work on Oculus devices,” but new apps will be needed “to use OpenXR. , unless a waiver is provided for. “In the meantime, Facebook” will help developers build new applications with OpenXR through our developer site “and” will perform OpenXR quality assurance testing for make sure the features work “.
Facebook “will not be able to provide access to the Oculus Native Mobile and PC APIs but will allow existing applications to continue to use them” and “may provide recommendations for migrating existing applications to OpenXR via guides but cannot assist in the creation of new applications. with Oculus Native and PC APIs.
The wide support for OpenXR by Facebook and other major VR players like Valve, Microsoft and HTC, as well as company game engines like Unity and Epic Games, should make it easier for developers to create games. virtual reality applications that run on a wide range of hardware. . Microsoft’s Flight Simulator VR is one of the first OpenXR compatible titles. At the end of 2020, Facebook started recommending that game engines use OpenXR.
Ramifications of the virtual reality industry
“It’s the right decision at the right time,” Palmer Luckey, original creator of Oculus Rift, wrote in a direct message. “One standard to rule them all didn’t make sense in the early days of VR given the fundamentally different approaches different companies have on the hardware and software side, let alone the business component – there was a time when SteamVR / OpenVR (which wasn’t actually open) had huge issues, and many companies were philosophically opposed to things like reprojection, the pain developers went through to support various APIs was key to building consensus on it. industry on what works best and why. HTC is likely to benefit the most from the widespread adoption of OpenXR on the enterprise side in the near future, but there are a few entrants to come who also have a lot to gain. Industry-wide standardization to the lowest common denominator still has its drawbacks, but they are almost certainly outweighed by the benefits for developers and gamers.
While the move should make it easier for developers of new apps to build for multiple hardware platforms, those building with older APIs or older versions of game engines may face some pressure to update for ensure their software and players are supported in case of bugs to access new features like the new Passthrough API.
“I will eventually switch to OpenXR but it will take months of work as Virtual Desktop has been developed against Oculus VrApi for the past 4 years,” wrote Guy Godin, Virtual Desktop developer. Tweeter and direct message. “I still have months of work to port Virtual Desktop from VrApi to OpenXR. A passing environment will not be possible until then. “
“I will no longer be able to expect that if a critical issue arises caused by Facebook’s new software, it will be resolved. Which will affect all PCVR games built before 2020 in Unity i.e. most of them, ”H3VR developer Anton Hand wrote in a direct message.
You can read more about the OpenXR transition on the Oculus Developer Blog.
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