OpenXR is the Khronos Group’s royalty-free API standard for virtual and augmented reality, providing a common interface between applications and XR runtimes so that a title written once runs across headsets from different vendors. It is one of the few genuine API standards in the games and immersive-computing stack, as opposed to an asset or transport format.
OpenXR
OpenXR is the Khronos Group’s royalty-free API standard for virtual and augmented reality, providing a common interface between applications and XR runtimes so that a title written once runs across headsets from different vendors. It is one of very few genuine API standards in the immersive computing stack, as opposed to an asset or transport format.
- Application and device layers - Two interfaces: what an application calls, and what a runtime must implement.
- Action-based input - Applications declare semantic actions rather than hardware buttons, which is what lets one title work across controllers nobody had shipped when it was written.
- Extension mechanism - Vendors expose new hardware capability through registered extensions without fragmenting the core.
- Broad runtime support - Implemented by the major headset vendors, which is the whole point.
OpenXR is worth flagging in a catalog dominated by data formats because it is an interface standard — a specified set of calls with conformance tests, in the shape a developer actually programs against. Its sibling glTF standardises what you load; OpenXR standardises how you present it. Very few verticals have both.
