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OpenXR Support for Oculus Quest and Quest 2

The OpenXR Mobile SDK includes the resources necessary to use the OpenXR API for native development of VR apps for Oculus Quest and Quest 2. OpenXR offers an alternate development path that allows developers to create portable code that can be used on devices from multiple vendors. Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2 are 1.0 adopters of OpenXR.

You can download the Oculus OpenXR Mobile SDK on our Downloads page.

About OpenXR

OpenXR is a royalty-free open standard from the Khronos Group created for the development of high-performance VR applications that run on multiple platforms. OpenXR aims to simplify VR development by enabling developers to reach more platforms while reusing the same code. To read more about OpenXR, see the Khronos OpenXR webpage.

OpenXR Developer Documentation

You can learn about using OpenXR to develop VR apps by reading the OpenXR 1.0 Specification at the Khronos Group site. The site also offers API reference documentation and a PDF reference guide that provides a detailed overview of the API.

Oculus OpenXR Mobile Development

In addition to the documentation from the Khronos Group, this section contains information necessary to develop OpenXR apps for Oculus Quest and Quest 2.

Android Manifest Specification

When setting up an OpenXR project for Oculus Quest and Quest 2, add the following activity intent filter to AndroidManifest.xml:

<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /> <category android:name="com.oculus.intent.category.VR" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>

Oculus Android OpenXR Loader

OpenXR 1.0 did not include a standard Android loader, and as such Oculus has provided a custom Android loader. The loader library can be found at /OpenXR/Libs/Android/ in this SDK package.

KHR Android Loader Extension

Before loading can occur, the loader must be initialized with platform-specific parameters. These parameters are specified with the KHR loader extensions, XR_KHR_loader_init and XR_KHR_loader_init_android, added in the 1.0.11 OpenXR specification. Apps are required to first get the function pointer for xrInitializeLoaderKHR via xrGetInstanceProcAddress with a null instance pointer, and then call xrInitializeLoaderKHR with the XrLoaderInitInfoAndroidKHR struct defined in XR_KHR_loader_init_android.

KHR Android Instance Creation Extension

Apps are required to specify platform-specific parameters to xrCreateInstance via the XR_KHR_android_create_instance extension.

Getting Started with the OpenXR Mobile SDK

This section walks you through the steps of getting started with hello_xr, a simple cross-platform OpenXR sample in the Khronos Group’s OpenXR-SDK-Source GitHub repository at https://github.com/KhronosGroup/OpenXR-SDK-Source/tree/master/src/tests/hello_xr.

Since there is not currently a standard Android OpenXR Loader, some modifications must be made to the sample in order to load the OpenXR runtime on Oculus systems:

  • Link against the Oculus OpenXR loader library in this package at /OpenXR/Libs/Android.
  • In /java/com/khronos/hello_xr/MainActivity.java, load the openxr_loader library before loading the application shared library: 
    System.loadLibrary("openxr_loader");
  • Add the following activity intent filter to AndroidManifest.xml at the application scope:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /> <category android:name="com.oculus.intent.category.VR" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>

Before running hello_xr, make sure to specify the graphics plugin to use with one of the following adb commands:

  • adb shell setprop debug.xr.graphicsPlugin.OpenGLES
  • adb shell setprop debug.xr.graphicsPlugin.Vulkan

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