OpenXR's first update in five years

INSIDE: 8K60fps video now on Quest, and the browser gets extensions

Greetings, AR enthusiasts.

OpenXR is almost ready to become the next standard for VR.

Your Quest can now watch video in 8K60fps, and make use of extensions like you would in Chrome.

In today’s Phantom Thread, we will look at:

  • OpenXR finally gets an update after years of fine tuning

  • Your Quest 3 can now play 8K60fps videos on YouTube

  • The Quest gets a productivity boost with a new PDF reader

  • Switch between app versions on Meta Quest

  • 3 AR Tools

WEEKLY THREADS

The weave: The Khronos OpenXR working group has finally decided on an updated standard in OpenXR 1.1 after almost 5 years in development.

The strands:

  • Version 1.1 adds more APIs to its core and now natively supports local floor and foveated rendering which were plugins earlier.

  • The popular VR standard aims to consolidate all the most used features into its core functionality for developers to take advantage of.

  • The working group is also looking at adding full body tracking and room scanning through future updates.

The fabric: With OpenXR, the Khronos group is attempting to defragment the MR industry and bring everything to a single standard like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The standard also lets headsets and devices from different brands work together seamlessly.

The weave: A version update to the YouTube VR app brought 8K 60fps support to the app, but only for Quest 3 headsets.

The strands:

  • There aren’t a ton of 8K videos on YouTube yet, and some videos claim to be in 8K, but are only 4K.

  • The easiest way to figure out if a video is in 8K is to look for “4320p60” in the quality settings.

  • Quite a few of Nature or landscape videos are in 8K, and a couple of movie trailers, so look out for them if you're going to test 8K video.

The fabric: 8K video isn’t all that popular generally, but it is a step towards the future when the format does become mainstream. YouTube has taken the first step, but it remains to be seen if streaming services make that leap too.

The weave: The latest update for the Quest Browser brings performance optimizations, but the most important new feature is the PDF reader.

The strands:

  • The reader is an extension you can get from the extension page, and works with any PDF you download with the browser.

  • The extension system hasn’t rolled out for everyone since it is experimental, but you can expect it on all versions very soon.

  • The browser update also made the New Tab page load faster.

The fabric: The PDF reader joins a host of extensions that enhance your experience with browsing the internet on your VR headset. Meta expects to add body tracking on WebXR apps, WebGPU support and more through these extensions.

AR TUTORIAL
Switch between app versions on Meta Quest

The weave: If you are currently participating in app betas on your Quest headset, the beta/alpha version is selected by default. But what if you want to go back to using a stable version.

Here’s our step-by-step guide:

  1. Find the app in your library.

  2. Select the three dots and go to Settings.

  3. Select Release Channels and select the version you’d like to use.

WEEKLY AR TOOL ROUNDUP

Featured AR tools:

  • Tribe XR DJ School - Learn how to DJ in VR though one on one classes and even stream your own events on Twitch

  • lawnmower - A web component library that aids you in building scenes in VR with HTML.

  • Herewe Studio - A Roblox like framework designed for making Metaverse experiences and deployment.

FLASH FRAMES

Amid a shortage of cadavers to practise on, doctors have turned to Veyond Metaverse’s medical AR platform that lets them train procedures using the Vision Pro.

Ford recently filed patents for AR technologies which could possibly come to their cars in the future, signalling the brands confidence in AR.

Meta is now targeting students as the next demographic who could champion the technology to the future.

The Quest 2 has received a permanent price drop to $199 after retailers dropped to that price as part of a limited time promotion earlier this year.

Coin operated arcades could be replaced by VR experiences, which is what Sandbox VR expects after announcing opportunities to open franchises in the US.

THAT’S ALL FOR THE WEEK