zSpace Joins OpenXR Group To Define Standards For VR Devices

zSpace, an education company that brings mixed reality experiences to computing, announced Wednesday (March 1) that it is joining the Khronos Group’s OpenXR working group to define a cross-vendor, royalty-free open standard for access to modern virtual reality (VR) devices.

A press release said the Khronos Group, which is an industry consortium accelerating the development and deployment of cross platform, open standard APIs, along with zSpace will define and support the development of OpenXR, a standard that enables VR applications to easily connect to VR hardware.

Key components of the new standard will include APIs for tracking of headsets, controllers and other objects, and for more easily integrating devices into a VR runtime, zSpace said in the release. By doing that, OpenXR will enable applications to work with any VR system that conforms to the Khronos standard. zSpace said that should significantly enhance the end-user experience and drive more choice of content, which should result in further growth of the VR market.

“As a founding member of Khronos OpenXR, zSpace is honored to play a key role in defining how developers will integrate VR technology across various platforms,” said Doug Twilleager, CTO of software, zSpace, in the press release. “We truly are on the forefront of something amazing, something game-changing, about how we interact and communicate with computers and the rest of the world.”

zSpace has been a player in VR for some time. At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, the annual tech show held each January in Las Vegas, zSpace developed an integration with Google Chrome, dubbed the zSpace zBrowser. With the browser, users were able to access the internet in a more immersive and interactive way. zBrowser put users right in the action with dynamically generated 3D and VR content, it said.

In addition, zSpace is already working with various education online content providers in the areas of STEM, medicine and the arts. As a member of this initiative, zSpace aims to make this experience available through all browsers and application developers, the company stated.