Mixed Reality Dev Days 2022
Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK), it’s an open-source project led by Microsoft that provides UX building blocks for MR and VR applications. The experiences you build with MRTK can run on any device that supports the OpenXR runtime such as HoloLens and Meta Quest. Components for hand and eye tracking, inputs, solvers, diagnostic tools, scene management, and more can help you to build experiences that look great with less effort. Microsoft will share the next release of this powerful toolkit, MRTK3 Public Preview, at Mixed Reality Dev Days on June 8-9. With MRTK3, you’ll have the option of a lighter-weight solution which allows you to select only the components of the toolkit you need. The release also includes a new interaction system, new theming and databinding features, Unity canvas support, and an updated design language that can help you refresh your app’s look and add polish. Additionally, native OpenXR support makes it even easier to target multiple devices. Join us June 8th and 9th for this free event via livestream or at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA to learn about MRTK3 directly from the engineers who are building the latest features. Join technical sessions, ask your questions live, and experience with the tools via an online hackathon. Register here to attend.#MixedRealityChallenge: StereoKit
November is a great time to get familiar with StereoKit, a code-first, open-source library for building mixed reality experiences using C# and OpenXR. We’ve released a 'Getting Started’ video series and are hosting an online hackathon to introduce this easy-onramp project to more developers so we can collect feedback and assess interest.sk_gpu.h - MR cross platform rendering API
I recently made some cool milestones with the cross-platform renderer I've been working on for StereoKit, so I figured I'd share a bit about it on here! So first! sk_gpu.h is a single-header, cross platform graphics library focused towards Mixed Reality rendering. It's somewhat low level, but it's definitely meant to be much easier than directly working with Vulkan or D3D12! It uses real HLSL for the shaders (I love HLSL!) and the goal is that it'll work on any platform that also has a Mixed Reality headset 🙂 The exciting part is that as of last week, I've already replaced StereoKit's old D3D11 renderer with sk_gpu in a branch, and it works great! StereoKit itself still only works with OpenXR on Windows/HoloLens platforms, but sk_gpu.h by itself works with OpenXR on Windows, HoloLens, and Oculus Quest! It even works on the flat web too, while I'd love to get to WebXR at some point, there's still some obstacles there. This is just the test scene I've been working with, but it demonstrates dynamic meshes, render to texture, cubemaps, instancing, and a few other things! But a lot of people ask me, why did I write this? Why not use something else? There's excellent tech out there already, like BGFX, and the amazing sokol_gfx! Even webgpu native could work if it wasn't so early. But here's my reasoning why: - I really wanted to use real HLSL. Not GLSL, or a pseudo shader language! - Tight focus on Mixed Reality rendering allows for simplification and hardware assumptions. - Smaller code base and more agility to respond to new MR graphics features! - I uh... couldn't figure out how to build any of the other libraries 😞 - ...and I really enjoy writing graphics code! There's still plenty more to do with sk_gpu.h, it definitely needs some cleanup, and I still need to figure out the best way to render in stereo on Quest! I'd also love to add some higher level things to it, like simple image and mesh loading to make it easier for people to try. Maybe even a Dear ImGui integration. Anyhow, I'd love to know what people think of it, or what everyone would like to see from a library like this 🙂 The source is MIT license up on Github! And definitely check out StereoKit too if this tickles your fancy!
