A call for standardization in XR – OpenXR
Something The AREA has been passionate about since its inception is open standards and interoperability in Augmented Reality. This article on Engineering.com explores why its necessary to make the call for standardization in XR and looks at the work of OpenXR.
The lion’s share of media attention sometimes appears to focus solely on the slowly-improving hardware capabilities of virtual reality and augmented reality headsets. Of course, getting the hardware engineering right is crucial for enthusiasts in this niche industry.
Like any new computer electronics hardware device, the potential capabilities are encapsulated and presented to the public in the form of enhanced or additional features, like a wider Field-of-View (FoV), or foveated rendering. But the lack of software applications for any emerging technology, including augmented reality and virtual reality headsets, is a hapless bottleneck to a wider scale adoption by enterprise, let alone consumer markets. And software is much more difficult to create for virtual reality and augmented reality. But bottlenecks are unavoidable in product development, especially of high technology.
for virtual reality and augmented reality companies this year, winning enterprise accounts is the main goal. But software applications for virtual reality and augmented reality are far and few between. And though this is natural for an emerging hardware technology, the scarcity also doubles as a bottleneck for wide-scale adoption.
The article looks through what is Open XR and what does OpenXR 0.90 do? The article concludes with the following summary statements:
Emerging technologies like AR and VR need time for development, and open standard organizations like OpenXR are trying to make it easier for developers to close the gap between touted potential and actualized potential.
Creating standards like Open XR 0.90 is an ongoing process, and universalizing development comes with it’s own costs. Certain data attributes will be lost in the attempt to standardize, so we’ll just have to wait and see how things develop.