I'm assuming if Microsoft is jumping aboard, then OpenXR works with DirectX and doesn't require the games/apps to be ported to OpenGL. The OpenXR spec has one mention of DirectX and it is phrased as if DirectX is supported.
I hope the open standards from the likes of Kronos keep gaining ground. We have had way to much proprietary stuff in the GPU world from API's, random Nvidia fixed functions, and even freaking monitor solution's. This densest need to repeat for VR.
Things are working the same way they did for Sound and 3D APIs: Multiple vendors produce multiple proprietary APIs to match the varying featuresets of their devices. After a few years and everyone getting a good feel for what features are universally needed, which are not, and what ways to interact with them work best, /then/ you can get everyone together and start to hash out a multi-vendor standard. Premature standardisation from trying to jump past the prodcuct development portion of the lifecycle just leaves you with a 'standard' utilised by nobody due to its inadequacy.
I hope not! Audio languished because of Creative Labs' monopoly that was gained via patents, which forced Microsoft to rework audio entirely, and now we've got a giant mixed bag of stuff with no real clear path towards neat stuff like object based audio formats; Sony's path tracing based 3D audio for the PS5 sounds interesting but we'll see if it gains any real traction). Also, I hope people know that Creative basically controls OpenAL (making it not that open, hence why its not even that popular). Heck, even Creative has been rolling through a mix of that stuff (THX, DD Live, etc). They're even dabbling back in proprietary stuff (they have some new surround processing thing). The whole thing was and still is a mess. We should've had dedicated path tracing audio chips that would enable object based audio that could be automatically tailored to your equipment and layout (EQ room correction for instance), even your specific hearing capabilities.
I'm talking about way back before the whole Aureal thing. To the time where games had you select your sound hardware before starting so that you could get any sound /at all/ because there was no standard audio interface. Today, when was the last time you've started a game and ever had to even consider the possibility that you wouldn't hear any audio?
My main machine has audio via display port, but also on-board. I am alternating between two USB connected headsets (remote work!), one of which also offers a disconncted mode over Bluetooth as well as a USB web cam. It's running virtual machines, Steam Remote Play and Terminal Services.
It comes to 12 audio outputs and 9 inputs.
It's a miracle if audio just work with five different sets of video conferencing software...
I've done some modelling in VR, and while it is amazing, it is also tiring. Being able to walk around and through your model and tweak it is great, but after a while your arms just start getting tired.
XR is the biggest own goal in the short history of consumer VR and AR.
When you don't have a business case for VR and AR you make up XR because you know somebody in a boardroom somewhere is dying to ask "What is our XR strategy?"
When your CEO is in front of legislators everywhere for destroying democracy and you need some press release to look like you do something innovative once in a while, you black out the front of a magic leap (AR headset with a $2000 version of the $200,000 holographic waveguide in a F-36 helmet) and say it is a VR headset. It looks less dorky than a Magic Leap because the front is blacked out, and less dorky than most VR headsets because the optics are bent. Maybe someday they'll have more laser speckles than pixels.
Remember Windows Mixed Reality? You had the astonishingly expensive Hololens and then a bunch of off-brand VR headsets. From a software perspective the image synthesis and user interface for AR and VR overlap a lot, but from an artistic and applications perspective you only confuse people and chase users away with labels like "XR".
They're going to overlap in the future. For instance the usability of VR headsets is improved if you have a camera pass-through option so you can see the outside world long enough to grab a drink.
Speak for yourself - I think it makes sense. The alternative is always saying "AR and VR", or leaving one of those things out - all of which are clunky options.
"AR headset with a $2000 version of the $200,000 holographic waveguide in a F-36 helmet"
No.
Magic Leap is a near-off-the-shelf near-eye microdisplay with two waveguides stuck together. It has the same limitations of all other waveguide near-eye displays (poor FoV/eyebox tradeoff due to fundamental Etendue limits) just with two fixed focal planes. Which as research shows, isn't close enough to the number needed to be useful for dealing with accommodation without eye-tracking and actively slewed focal surfaces. The F-35 HMDS, like almost any HMD for pilot usage prior (it is not a new design) is a collimated optic design with a dichroic spherical-surface mirror built into the visor and a spherical-emissive projector in the brow. It works as a scaled-down version of the collimated dispalys used in flight simulators, except the use of a dichroic mirror means it reflects the light from the projector, and passes light arriving externally. beyond 'it's a display, that;s on your head', the two technologies are unrelated. It offers a very high field of view (limited only by spherical mirror solid angle coverage) and the fixed infinite focus is not a concern for the infinite-distance viewing of the external environment from a cockpit.
So I have a Windows WMR headset from Lenovo, a couple of years old. TBH I haven't used it in nearly a year, thinking about selling it. I think it has external cameras, which have never been activated (no capability to do so exists.). I run it with a GTX 1060 GPU, & i3-6100, soon to be a Ryzen system with the GTX 1060.
Is this OpenXR likely to come to my headset? Will it be of any use for such an old system?
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jordanclock - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
I'm assuming if Microsoft is jumping aboard, then OpenXR works with DirectX and doesn't require the games/apps to be ported to OpenGL. The OpenXR spec has one mention of DirectX and it is phrased as if DirectX is supported.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
Yes. OpenXR is independent of the graphics API used.FreckledTrout - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
I hope the open standards from the likes of Kronos keep gaining ground. We have had way to much proprietary stuff in the GPU world from API's, random Nvidia fixed functions, and even freaking monitor solution's. This densest need to repeat for VR.edzieba - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
Things are working the same way they did for Sound and 3D APIs: Multiple vendors produce multiple proprietary APIs to match the varying featuresets of their devices. After a few years and everyone getting a good feel for what features are universally needed, which are not, and what ways to interact with them work best, /then/ you can get everyone together and start to hash out a multi-vendor standard.Premature standardisation from trying to jump past the prodcuct development portion of the lifecycle just leaves you with a 'standard' utilised by nobody due to its inadequacy.
darkswordsman17 - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
I hope not! Audio languished because of Creative Labs' monopoly that was gained via patents, which forced Microsoft to rework audio entirely, and now we've got a giant mixed bag of stuff with no real clear path towards neat stuff like object based audio formats; Sony's path tracing based 3D audio for the PS5 sounds interesting but we'll see if it gains any real traction). Also, I hope people know that Creative basically controls OpenAL (making it not that open, hence why its not even that popular). Heck, even Creative has been rolling through a mix of that stuff (THX, DD Live, etc). They're even dabbling back in proprietary stuff (they have some new surround processing thing). The whole thing was and still is a mess. We should've had dedicated path tracing audio chips that would enable object based audio that could be automatically tailored to your equipment and layout (EQ room correction for instance), even your specific hearing capabilities.edzieba - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
I'm talking about way back before the whole Aureal thing. To the time where games had you select your sound hardware before starting so that you could get any sound /at all/ because there was no standard audio interface. Today, when was the last time you've started a game and ever had to even consider the possibility that you wouldn't hear any audio?abufrejoval - Wednesday, July 29, 2020 - link
all the time, all the time...My main machine has audio via display port, but also on-board.
I am alternating between two USB connected headsets (remote work!), one of which also offers a disconncted mode over Bluetooth as well as a USB web cam.
It's running virtual machines, Steam Remote Play and Terminal Services.
It comes to 12 audio outputs and 9 inputs.
It's a miracle if audio just work with five different sets of video conferencing software...
Mr Perfect - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
The Blender support is really interesting. Being able to create 3D models in a 3D space? That's got to be amazing.martinw - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
I've done some modelling in VR, and while it is amazing, it is also tiring. Being able to walk around and through your model and tweak it is great, but after a while your arms just start getting tired.Zingam - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
Clicker kids these days complaining about some physical activity! Imagine Michelangelo hammering stone all day long!PaulHoule - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
XR is the biggest own goal in the short history of consumer VR and AR.When you don't have a business case for VR and AR you make up XR because you know somebody in a boardroom somewhere is dying to ask "What is our XR strategy?"
When your CEO is in front of legislators everywhere for destroying democracy and you need some press release to look like you do something innovative once in a while, you black out the front of a magic leap (AR headset with a $2000 version of the $200,000 holographic waveguide in a F-36 helmet) and say it is a VR headset. It looks less dorky than a Magic Leap because the front is blacked out, and less dorky than most VR headsets because the optics are bent. Maybe someday they'll have more laser speckles than pixels.
Remember Windows Mixed Reality? You had the astonishingly expensive Hololens and then a bunch of off-brand VR headsets. From a software perspective the image synthesis and user interface for AR and VR overlap a lot, but from an artistic and applications perspective you only confuse people and chase users away with labels like "XR".
stephenbrooks - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
They're going to overlap in the future. For instance the usability of VR headsets is improved if you have a camera pass-through option so you can see the outside world long enough to grab a drink.Spunjji - Thursday, July 30, 2020 - link
Speak for yourself - I think it makes sense. The alternative is always saying "AR and VR", or leaving one of those things out - all of which are clunky options.edzieba - Friday, July 31, 2020 - link
"AR headset with a $2000 version of the $200,000 holographic waveguide in a F-36 helmet"No.
Magic Leap is a near-off-the-shelf near-eye microdisplay with two waveguides stuck together. It has the same limitations of all other waveguide near-eye displays (poor FoV/eyebox tradeoff due to fundamental Etendue limits) just with two fixed focal planes. Which as research shows, isn't close enough to the number needed to be useful for dealing with accommodation without eye-tracking and actively slewed focal surfaces.
The F-35 HMDS, like almost any HMD for pilot usage prior (it is not a new design) is a collimated optic design with a dichroic spherical-surface mirror built into the visor and a spherical-emissive projector in the brow. It works as a scaled-down version of the collimated dispalys used in flight simulators, except the use of a dichroic mirror means it reflects the light from the projector, and passes light arriving externally. beyond 'it's a display, that;s on your head', the two technologies are unrelated. It offers a very high field of view (limited only by spherical mirror solid angle coverage) and the fixed infinite focus is not a concern for the infinite-distance viewing of the external environment from a cockpit.
Tomatotech - Thursday, July 30, 2020 - link
So I have a Windows WMR headset from Lenovo, a couple of years old. TBH I haven't used it in nearly a year, thinking about selling it. I think it has external cameras, which have never been activated (no capability to do so exists.). I run it with a GTX 1060 GPU, & i3-6100, soon to be a Ryzen system with the GTX 1060.Is this OpenXR likely to come to my headset? Will it be of any use for such an old system?