Meta Will Recommend Using Unity & Unreal’s Built-In OpenXR Support

Meta will recommend that developers use the built-in OpenXR support of Unity and Unreal from next week.

The news comes shortly after we reported on developer frustration that Meta’s Unity and Unreal integrations, which are described as using OpenXR, block other PC VR headsets. Developers using these integrations, which Meta had been recommending and promoting, need to implement a separate subsystem to support other PC VR headsets, the problem that OpenXR was supposed to solve.

Meta’s Unity & Unreal “OpenXR” Integrations Block Other PC VR Headsets

Meta’s Unity and Unreal “OpenXR” SDKs block other PC VR headsets, going against the spirit of the standard, and developers aren’t happy about it.

Now, in a new blog post seemingly in response to these concerns, Meta announced that starting from v74 of its SDKs, releasing next week, “the built-in OpenXR path for all major game engines will be a recommended path for development”.

• For Unity, the company says that version 1.14 of Unity’s own OpenXR Plugin has “achieved feature and performance parity” with the Oculus XR Plugin. In addition to this, developers will still be able to “utilize Horizon OS-specific features through extensions and the Meta XR Core SDK, and continue optimizing their content to take advantage of all our platform features.”, Meta writes.
• For Unreal Engine, the situation is somewhat more complicated. Unreal has its own OpenXR support, which Meta’s documentation currently doesn’t mention, and Meta offers its own integration with more Quest-focused features. Separately, Meta maintains its own fork of Unreal, with the source code available to developers, which it to date “strongly recommends”. Meta says it will offer “more details” on its future recommendations for Unreal engine next week, including a “trade-off table” it says it will publish.
• For Godot, the free and open-source alternative to Unity & Unreal, the path to supporting Quest already leveraged its built-in OpenXR support, which Meta funded Godot veterans to improve, and support for Quest features not yet part of the core OpenXR standard can be activated through the Godot OpenXR Vendors plugin, which enables the specific features of headsets from other companies too.

Meta Funding Godot Veterans To Improve Its Quest & OpenXR Support

Meta is funding a group of Godot veterans to improve the engine’s OpenXR and Quest SDKs support and build high-quality samples and documentation.

In what appears to be a response to the allegations from some in the industry of Meta intentionally not upholding the spirit of OpenXR, Meta notes that it has “played a major role” in developing, adopting, and advancing the standard since 2016. Here’s the company’s statement from the blog post:

“Since ensuring that our OpenXR runtimes for Meta Quest and PC were 100% OpenXR compliant in 2019, we have pushed to continue advancing OpenXR as a viable cross-device solution. We are continuously creating new XR technologies to enable unique and immersive experiences, exposed as OpenXR extensions. We also build libraries to support these new extensions. As part of our commitment to OpenXR, we contribute these advancements back to the community, allowing other companies to adopt and build upon them.

In fact, Meta has contributed to 33 (~67%) of Khronos and cross-vendor extensions, as well as 61 vendor-specific extensions. Among those vendor-specific extensions, many of them (e.g. SpaceWarp, foveation, passthrough, etc.) are adopted by other OpenXR vendors for the better interoperability with apps that were originally developed for Meta devices. These contributions have been adopted by other vendors who recognize Meta’s dedication to advancing the industry and contributing back to the standard.”

“As early adopters of OpenXR, Meta has contributed significant resources to both expanding the standard and enabling OpenXR support in popular game engines. We remain committed to OpenXR and will continue to invest in the success of OpenXR and our developers.”