As we reflect on the strides made in recent months, it's remarkable to see how OpenXR and Monado have evolved and are shaping the future of XR development. In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at the progress made and noteworthy achievements within the OpenXR ecosystem.

Monado and OpenXR Development

Monado, the cross-platform, open-source OpenXR runtime, has been at the forefront of XR advancements last year. On July 3rd, 2023, Khronos issued an RFP for a project called "Monado Improvements" aimed at improving Monado's general suitablity for XR display devices and companion devices. Collabora bid on this RFP and won the project! Our Monado expertise and dedication were well utilized for refining key features considered crucial to the OpenXR Khronos Group, resulting in substantial improvements in Monado's functionalities and performance.

Here are the most significant things we updated in Monado:

• Refactoring of the Layer squasher to process each view separately
• Refactoring of the compositor graphics pipeline
• Addition of cylinder and equirect2 layer types to compute path
• Support for XrEventDataReferenceSpaceChangePending event 
• Enhancements to the Monado 'Spaces' implementation
• Improvements to the IPC system
• Implementation of the XR_KHR_visibility_mask extension
• Implementation of the XR_KHR_vulkan_swapchain_format_list extension
• Implementation of the XR_EXT_conformance_automation extension

Here are some things that are almost finished, but are still pending:

• Direct Mode compositor target on Windows
• Helper code and configuration format for device attachment hierarchy
• XR_EXT_debug_utils extension
• XR_EXT_eye_gaze_interaction extension
• XR_EXT_hand_joints_motion_range extension
• XR_EXT_palm_pose extension
• XR_EXT_win32_appcontainer_compatible extension

These strides underscore how important Monado is to the Khronos OpenXR community, serving as an essential robust and adaptable open-source solution. If you're a Monado user or developer, check out this comprehensive technical summary and feel free to pick up any outstanding item in there and send us patches!

Noteworthy Achievements

During the 2023 OpenXR F2F in Montreal, Rylie Pavlik, principal engineer at Collabora and specification editor of the Khronos' OpenXR standard, was honored with the prestigious "Khronie Award" for her exceptional work and dedication to advancing OpenXR. This recognition highlights Collabora's commitment to excellence and the expertise it brings to the table. Check out the full story. Congratulations Rylie!

Additionally, Collabora expanded its team with the appointment of Frederic Plourde as the new "Vice Outreach Officer." Frederic's role will focus on fostering collaboration, engaging with the community, and driving outreach initiatives to ensure the continued growth and success of OpenXR. Check out the list of all the Khronos officers.

What's to come

We are thrilled to share a glimpse of the exciting developments lined up for Monado for the rest of the year. Our R&D roadmap is packed with exciting enhancements that promise to elevate the XR experience to new heights. Among the key highlights are:

SLAM Enhancements

From previous posts, you know that we have been extensively working on our fork of Basalt, a basalt-based inside-out tracking solution optimized for XR and available to Monado through the new vit_interface. Well, we are currently working on adding persistent mapping capabilities to it, which pave the way for improved localization accuracy, consistent virtual object placement, efficient re-localization, and the ability to load multiple pre-saved spaces.

Non-Egocentric Hand-Tracking

With our Monado optical hand-tracking solution that we publicly announced last year, we reached an unprecedented level of advancement in free and open-source hand-tracking for Monado. With the work that we are planning this year, users can expect non-egocentric use cases to work naturally and intuitively, unlocking new possibilities for creativity and productivity on other form factors.

Remote-Rendering

We are currently working on ElectricMaple, a Gstreamer and Monado-based Remote Rendering solution. Because it is so new, we can't share more details at this point, but stay tuned for announcements on that front at AWE USA 2024 this summer in Long Beach, where we'll be one of the exhibitors!

While we can't make commitments on specific timelines, we are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of open-source XR technology and delivering these enhancements in the near future. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our journey of innovation and discovery.

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Related Posts

Monado SLAM datasets now available

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