Standardization of Surfaces, Markers, Anchors & Persistence with OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions

OpenXR and Spatial Extensions: A Chaotic Dive into AR/VR Wonderland

So, I was diving into this whole OpenXR thing — you know, that standard for AR, VR, MR, XYZ, whatever. It’s like this open playground where developers can make those mind-bending apps for headsets. Picture this: a world where your app doesn’t panic when you switch headsets, and it’s not throwing a tantrum about different vendor APIs. Almost all the cool kids — except Apple Vision Pro and PlayStation VR2 — are on board. Why not them? Beats me. Maybe they just want to be the hipsters of the technology world.

Right, so these new OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions — quite a mouthful, huh? — they’re here to shake things up. It’s like they’re giving headsets and glasses superpowers to understand the environment better. Imagine your device looking around and figuring out, "Hey, that’s a wall," or, "Check out that marker!" This used to be this messy, everyone-doing-their-own-thing situation. Now, it’s a bit like herding cats into a standardized kitty parade.

Let’s break it down from this base thing called XR_EXT_spatial_entities extension. It’s like the backbone, I think. Then you’ve got five extensions building on it. Picture stacking blocks — or maybe more like a Jenga tower if you’re chaotic like me.

• XR_EXT_spatial_plane_tracking: Says it’s about "detection and spatial tracking of real-world surfaces." Can we say the floor is literally lava?

• XR_EXT_spatial_marker_tracking: 6 DOF tracking. Whatever DOF stands for! Like head-tracking when you spot a QR code mid-sneeze.

• XR_EXT_spatial_anchor: Positioning stuff. Keeps your virtual cup of coffee sitting on your real desk, not floating away.

• XR_EXT_spatial_persistence: So you can continue to ignore virtual stuff across sessions. The mess doesn’t vanish when you log back in.

• XR_EXT_spatial_persistence_operations: Advanced something-or-other to deal with the persistent messiness spatially.

Meta’s Ron Bessems (big shot over at the OpenXR Working Group) pretty much said they’re listening to developers who want these standardized magic tricks baked into headsets. Sounds like they’ve hit a milestone — but who counts those anyway? It’s like finally getting a band together that doesn’t argue over who’s bringing snacks to rehearsal.

And wait, there’s a teaser for the future: stuff like image and object tracking might be on the way. Imagine a headset that knows when you’re smirking at it. Creepy or amazing? Maybe both.

Anyway — or was it anyhow? — Meta, Google, and a bunch of others (Pico, Varjo, Unity, Godot, Collabora) are waving their little pom-poms in support. So, it’s like this giant collaboration dance party. Everyone’s on the dance floor, except for those couple oddballs in the corner. They’ll join… eventually?

So yeah, it’s a wild ride, and who knows what’s next. Here’s to hoping our virtual worlds stay grounded — at least until we want them to fly.