Unity OpenXR Support?

Just seen Oculus Quest is announcing OpenXR support

When can we expect to see OpenXR support with Unity in this growing fragmented market? I am aware the XR Management Subsystems handle some of this but when can we see some OpenXR support?

7 Likes

I already asked without any reply. I don’t think we can expect that anytime soon.

It is frustrating to work in this field where you can see the standardisation happening in the right place (OpenXR) but not in the game engine you use.

Usually I kick up a fuss until I get the answer I need but it really is tiresome when I just want to focus on developing and being successful with the applications I make.

5 Likes

OpenXR is available in UE4 as a preview, I guess it’s not yet stable to ship it.

1 Like

Quote from Khronos site (so I guess it’s in the baking):

“Unity is committed to being an open and accessible platform and we remain supportive of open standards for XR applications and devices. To that end, we’re excited about OpenXR and believe this is a significant step towards a more open ecosystem.”

Ralph Hauwert
Vice president of platforms at Unity Technologies

1 Like

Unity Blog This is Unity’s official position.

The famous blog post… it is likely OpenXR will be another XR Plugin alongside Oculus plugin, OpenVR plugin, WMR plugin etc

Let’s hope so…

If not, Unity developers will be facing considerable timelines awaiting for hardware vendor support.

Hey Guys, Can anyone tell me what’s up with Open XR and Unity, Upon reading I am guessing that Unity XR plugin will be clashing with Open XR, or am I wrong about this? I’ll be happy if someone can educate me on this? Thanks, guys!

Little update from SteamVR here, sort of calls Unity out by mentioning that Unreal has OpenXR out the box now and is just a checkbox away. Then goes on to mention Unity doesn’t really have OpenXR support.

Bit odd huh? Would love an update on this from Unity. OpenXR could greatly simplify VR Development for us all and enable us to focus more on our games/applications rather than specific platform support.

1 Like

It was already stated many times that it is up to Steam the development of the OpenXR plugin, it is even re-confirmed in the link you mentioned:

On Unity, the latest SteamVR Unity Plugin (beta) supports Unity XR for rendering and SteamVR Input for controller processing, currently via the OpenVR API. We intend to continue development of this plugin in the push towards OpenXR.

It should be also “one checkbox away” on Unity once they have a stable version.

Unless you have another source, this quote from the article is a bit fluffy around what it means. It could mean that Valve will be responsible for making the OpenXR plugin in Unity as part of their OpenVR plugin, which doesn’t make sense really as the OpenVR loader in XR Plugin Management is intended for deployment to Steam with OpenVR. Surely it would be renamed.

Or it could mean that they will maintain their OpenVR XR plugin in Unity as part of their efforts to encourage Unity developers to use XR Plugin management in Unity so they can have the multiple plugin targets using it so they can deploy to Oculus, Windows MR, SteamVR in one app and allow the plugin manager to select with XR Plugin Loader to run at runtime.

To be honest the water becomes muddied at this point with XR Plugin Management and OpenXR diverging in the areas of build targets. We should ideally be able to use OpenXR as the base, then the plugin manager or similar could handle a runtime check of what system is used ie. Windows MR/Oculus/OpenVR and the devs can make platform specific code that runs there for platform specific features like achievements, steamVR overlays, Oculus overlays and similar native platform functionality.

Maybe this is all intended to diverge there, if you have any other sources on this please post them here to help me and others.

I like how this article doesn’t mention OpenXR once in it!

4 Likes

Not directly, but:
6025907--650072--upload_2020-6-26_9-49-13.png
The first link leads to here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/7/2268069450205612646/?_ga=2.155796091.1189897844.1592217073-2011736305.1579460397
Which have more info about the current state and contains a link to a preview version of the OpenXR package: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamvr_unity_plugin/tree/2.6.0b1

EDIT: sent the wrong link to the package, here is the right one https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamvr_unity_plugin/tree/UnityXRPlugin

You are confusing OpenVR with OpenXR, run a ctrl+f search for ‘OpenXR’ on any of those links including the one from my comment. OpenVR and OpenXR are different things.

I would like to keep this thread to talking about OpenXR to avoid any further confusion. I have been using the OpenVR Xr Plugin beta version for quite some time now but am more interested in using OpenXR for wide platform support.

3 Likes

lol sorry, I copied the wrong link, edited the post. Anyway, I think it is not Unity’s fault that Valve is developing an “OpenVR XR plugin” instead of just integrating their OpenXR plugin with the Unity XR SDK.

Maybe opening a thread on the steamcommunity forums to question this would be more effective (but I am curious too if Unity has anything to say about that).

1 Like

^THIS

It’s really unbelievable. The first thing I did when I saw hippocoder’s reply:
Open link in new tab > Ctrl F “OpenXR” > facepalm

5 Likes

What?
paleae we need info about OpenXR for unity

1 Like

I have mixed feelings about that. In the end, it could be the awaited, disruptive standard that would change XR development. But how does it translate in ‘Unity time’ and strategy? While they are publicly ‘supportive’ about it, I don’t see anything besides a vague statement and lack of communication. Who will implement the plugin? I also think about all the certification checks between versions on both sides…

1 Like

Sometimes I wonder if Unity guys really understand OpenXR or not. It seems they don’t give a damn about this while Unreal, Steam, Oculus put resources to it.

2 Likes