Facebook today announced that a prototype version of OpenXR, the royalty-free open standard from The Khronos Group, will be available to Oculus Quest and Rift developers in an update coming later this month.

OpenXR is a work-in-progress standard that aims to unify the underlying connections between VR and AR hardware, game engines, and content, making for a more interoperable ecosystem.

This essentially means that any app created for one OpenXR headset should technically be able to run on an entirely different OpenXR headset with zero changes to the underlying code.

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Oculus Rift and Rift S developers have already had preliminary access to OpenXR since late last year via that platform’s Public Test Channel, UploadVR notes.

Bringing Quest into the fold via prototype support for OpenXR potentially opens up that platform to a greater number of games, apps, and experiences, provided they can not only squeeze onto the standalone headset’s modest Snapdraon 835 chipset and make it past Oculus’ strict content selection process.

Facebook has published a developer blog post, noting that both the Oculus PC and Mobile SDKs will include the resources necessary to use the Prototype OpenXR API for native C/C++ development of Oculus Rift Platform apps and Android apps for Oculus Quest respectively.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.