#1385: OpenXR 1.1 Release Promotes Extensions into Core & Marks Yearly Release Cycle for Prominent XR Industry Open Standard

The OpenXR 1.1 minor release comes out today, which moves some of the more commonly used extensions into core and it also marks a new Khronos Group commitment to a yearly release cycle. It's been nearly five years since the initial release of OpenXR 1.0 on July 29, 2019, and Khronos Group President Neil Trevett tells me that it's been one of the most successful open standards they've ever published, and I had a chance to catch up with Trevett and OpenXR working group chair Alfredo Muniz to talk about the range of conformant XR devices, engines, programs, what's happening with Apple and OpenXR, next steps for where they plan to take the standard in the future, and how you can get more involved either through their OpenXR Discord channel, OpenXR Forums, or OpenXR GitHub Issue Tracker.

Also, here's a link to the announcement slides for OpenXR 1.1, which have some really helpful overview information about how broadly OpenXR has been adopted, as well as a sneak peak at some of what is coming soon including "extending hand tracking, enhanced handling of spatial entities, expanded haptics support, controller render models (glTF), increased accessibility, and Metal (Mac OS) support."

I posted a thread on X / Twitter that highlights some of these slides from the OpenXR 1.1 announcement page.

Here's five previous interviews covering the evolution of OpenXR since 2015:

My 2015 interview with Neil Trevett with some preliminary thoughts about an open standard for VR

My 2016 interview with Neil Trevett announcing the formation of what would become OpenXR

My 2017 GDC conversation with Joe Ludwig marking the announcement of OpenXR.

My 2018 GDC conversation with OpenXR working group chair Nick Whiting with a first look at OpenXR.

My 2019 SIGGRAPH conversation with Neil Trevett marking the official OpenXR 1.0 release

Also see some related topics within my interviews tagged with open standards.