Khronos Announces OpenXR, WebGL 2.0 Finalized & More

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Khronos Announces OpenXR, WebGL 2.0 Finalized & More

The Khronos Group not only is shipping Vulkan 1.0.42 with many new extensions for this week's GDC but the embargo just expired on even more exciting announcements!..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Khronos-GDC-OpenXR-More

[schmidtbag]

I don't get it, what's the difference between OpenXR and OpenVR? I understand OpenVR wasn't created or "authorized" (or whatever you want to call it) by Khronos, but was there anything wrong with it that prevents Khronos from adopting it?

[LinAGKar]

I don't get it, what's the difference between OpenXR and OpenVR? I understand OpenVR wasn't created or "authorized" (or whatever you want to call it) by Khronos, but was there anything wrong with it that prevents Khronos from adopting it?

OpenVR is controlled solely by valve.

[schmidtbag]

OpenVR is controlled solely by valve.

It's also developed by OSVR/Sensics. Regardless, seeing as it is actually open source, I don't see why they couldn't distribute it to Khronos. It shares the same purpose that OpenXR has (which as the article states, Valve also takes part in). The only difference is Valve dictated how OpenVR works.

[Tiger_Coder]

It's also developed by OSVR/Sensics. Regardless, seeing as it is actually open source, I don't see why they couldn't distribute it to Khronos. It shares the same purpose that OpenXR has (which as the article states, Valve also takes part in). The only difference is Valve dictated how OpenVR works.

May be it is like Mantle|Vulkan. OpenXR might be based on OpenVR but processed by Khronos and others so it can be accepted to all like Google and Occulus.

[haagch]

It's also developed by OSVR/Sensics.

It isn't.

Regardless, seeing as it is actually open source, I don't see why they couldn't distribute it to Khronos.

libopenvr_api.so is open source, but the only thing it really does is loading the proprietary SteamVR runtime.
I believe that if you take https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ope...aders/openvr.h and implement all the functions yourself (e.g. by making use of OSVR or OpenHMD) you could swap out libopenvr_api.so from game releases and use the games without SteamVR, but it looks quite involved and Valve keeps changing the API all the time, so you would always have a moving target. Also by default it compiles a static library, so if developers statically link libopenvr_api.a, you're out of luck (does LD_PRELOAD work to overwrite symbols from statically linked libraries? What if they are optimized out/inlined, etc?)

It shares the same purpose that OpenXR has (which as the article states, Valve also takes part in). The only difference is Valve dictated how OpenVR works.

Not really. OpenVR's purpose is to be a wrapper around their proprietary SteamVR runtime. You could make other implementations, but that's not really its purpose.

[computerquip]

It's a matter of copyright and licensing.

[andrei_me]

I don't get it, what's the difference between OpenXR and OpenVR? I understand OpenVR wasn't created or "authorized" (or whatever you want to call it) by Khronos, but was there anything wrong with it that prevents Khronos from adopting it?

They stole the name that Khronos was going to use, so as OpenVR was an unavailable name, they had to go with OpenXR, which is great because the X have "cross" sound, that serves as the multiplatform VR

[schmidtbag]

They stole the name that Khronos was going to use, so as OpenVR was an unavailable name, they had to go with OpenXR, which is great because the X have "cross" sound, that serves as the multiplatform VR

It doesn't seem very Valve-like to do such a thing, especially considering they are also contributors to OpenXR.