For the past two years, Holochip has been working on light field technology for the US Navy’s Aegis program. The program calls for a table top light field display that can accommodate horizontal and vertical real-time parallax. In October 2020, the team working on OpenXR™ at Holochip released an open source Vulkan® example project and started work with light field display technology using the OpenXR API. As a result of both efforts, Holochip has discovered a method of light field real-time rendering that is built upon the Khronos Group’s Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions.

OpenXR development has been advancing quickly and is becoming the de-facto API for XR. Since the 1.0 version was released last year, there are now multiple conformant implementations from Microsoft and Oculus. Minecraft, Blender, Chromium, and Firefox Reality have also all embraced OpenXR.

OpenXR is the Khronos Group’s royalty-free, open standard for high-performance access to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)—collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. In a significant step in OpenXR’s rollout across the industry, the Working Group has released its Conformance Test Suite, published the tests as Apache 2.0-licensed open source software on GitHub, and launched the OpenXR 1.0 Adopters Program so that implementations can be officially conformant for the first time.

Virtual reality and augmented reality have great potential for entertainment, training and education, and other industries, but are currently being held back by industry fragmentation. The Khronos Group is addressing this by creating the OpenXR API, and shares details of its creation and considerations, as well as the first demo of the API at SIGGRAPH 2018.

After announcing the OpenXR working group this year at GDC, Khronos members are working hard to bring the standard to life, while also educating the industry on the importance of this upcoming technology. This week, VRDC brings together creators and key influencers in the virtual and augmented reality industries for the latest technology demos and discussions on best practices. During the show in San Francisco, some of our members will join a panel to discuss OpenXR and fragmentation in the AR/VR/MR industry.

In early August the team was at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, where we celebrated OpenGL’s 25th anniversary at the BOF Blitz Party. We also announced a new website, as well as OpenGL 4.6, a growing glTF ecosystem, and the Vulkan Portability Initiative.

If you are going to be at the 44th SIGGRAPH, the largest conference and exhibition in computer graphics and exhibition techniques, from July 30 – August 3, 2017 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, don’t miss the opportunity to eat, drink, and learn about all things Khronos!

Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, will join other virtual reality industry leaders when he presents at the VR Connects San Francisco global conference happening June 27-28.

We are pleased to announce the Khronos VR Initiative has decided on the name of the upcoming open standard for virtual reality and augmented reality: OpenXR™! Comprised of a who's-who of industry leaders, the OpenXR working group is creating an open and royalty-free standard for VR and AR applications and devices. OpenXR will encourage innovation while accelerating market growth and user adoption.