The OpenXR Working Group wishes to expand and demonstrate the reach of the API Standard by better integrating OpenXR with the Godot game engine to effectively bridge the gap between runtime developers and application developers.

The XR_EXT_local_floor extension recently made its way into the core specification with the release of OpenXR 1.1. This blog post, delves into the technical aspects of the LOCAL_FLOOR[1] reference space. While STAGE space is still available to developers for defining playspace bounds, we will show how LOCAL_FLOOR offers a convenient alternative for obtaining a recenterable floor space that does not require user calibration. Additionally, we explore how this extension includes an estimated floor height, adding further convenience to XR development workflows.

The Khronos Group announces the immediate availability of the OpenXR 1.1 specification. This release evolves the widely adopted OpenXR open API standard for high-performance, cross-platform access to VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR) — collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. OpenXR 1.1 consolidates widely used API extensions into the core specification to reduce fragmentation and adds new functionality to streamline the development of more powerful and efficient XR applications. Along with five extensions being incorporated in the core specification, feature enhancements include interaction profile enhancements, universal fundamental tools for building enhanced XR experiences, new error codes, and specification refinement.

Intel’s OpenCL Intercept Layer 3.0.4 is now available to assist in OpenCL debugging and performance profiling across Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and FreeBSD. The release has overhead reduction work to yield better performance during tracing and profiling, many general improvements to tracing and logging, kernel capture and replay support, more support for Chrome tracing, and a variety of other new abilities. Those developing with OpenCL and wishing to check out Intel’s intercept layer for debugging and performance profiling can find the Intel’s OpenCL Intercept Layer available on GitHub.

Magic Leap is fully embracing OpenXR, the industry standard API, for Magic Leap 2 development. This includes support for the standard Unity OpenXR Plugin. This change should make it easier for developers building AR apps across multiple headsets.

The results of LunarG’s 2024 Vulkan Ecosystem & SDK Survey have been released! LunarG has summarized the results and created a report that shares the key findings and suggested actions. The information you provided will be used to help guide Vulkan Ecosystem investments in 2024 and beyond. The results have also been shared with key partners and contributors in the hope that they will also use the information to guide their investments.

Thanks to those of you who completed the annual survey!

The OpenCL Working Group has released v3.0.16 of the OpenCL specifications, the sixteenth OpenCL 3.0 maintenance update. This is a significant update that integrates the standard Khronos KHR extension specifications into the core specification, making it easier for users and implementers to understand how extensions interact with core OpenCL functionality.

In addition, this update added the provisional cl_khr_kernel_clock extension, which adds new built-in functions to profile a kernel executing on an OpenCL device. It also includes final versions of the cl_khr_semaphore, cl_khr_external_semaphore, and cl_khr_external memory extensions, enabling efficient interoperability with other APIs.

The latest specifications can be found on the Khronos OpenCL registry: https://registry.khronos.org/OpenCL/

Vulkan Portability is a Khronos initiative to promote the consistent use of Vulkan functionality that is layered over other underlying APIs to enable the portable deployment of Vulkan applications on platforms without Vulkan native drivers, such as Apple’s macOS and iOS. In March 2024, Richard Wright from LunarG updated the State of Vulkan on Apple Devices white paper to reflect the latest availability of the Vulkan SDK on Apple platforms, and its ability to be used to develop applications that are fully compatible with the Apple App Store.

In this tutorial, Khronos member Steve Winston of Holochip uses the latest Khronos Vulkan samples to illustrate how to work with Vulkan on iOS.

In this Collabora blog, Frederic Plourde reflects 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. This blog post takes a closer look at the progress made and noteworthy achievements within the OpenXR ecosystem.

Intel announced that the oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler has completed conformance testing and is the first compiler officially supporting the full SYCL 2020 specification from the Khronos Group. Having it as a complete reference implementation is a major milestone not only for Intel, but for the entire accelerated computing software industry.

For developers, having a SYCL 2020-conformant compiler means they can have confidence that their SYCL code compiled by Intel’s compiler is portable and reliably performs on different GPUs in the long term. An application developed using SYCL 2020 can adapt to changing platform architecture and future generations of diverse and new accelerators. This worthy investment will continue adding value by reducing development and maintenance costs for many years as new architectures emerge.

At GDC 2024, AMD announced that FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3.1), AMD’s cutting-edge open upscaling technology, will be released later this year with Vulkan support. With Vulkan support, AMD opens up the possibilities for Linux-native games seeing support.

Perfect Corp., the leading AI and AR beauty and fashion technology provider and developer of ‘Beautiful AI’ solutions, announced a significant enhancement to its AI-powered Jewelry VTO. The latest update to Perfect Corp.’s system now supports the upload of glTF 2.0 (Graphics Library Transmission Format) files, streamlining 3D file upload and formatting processes for brand partners in the jewelry and watch industries. The update simplifies 3D model creation by allowing brands to upload wireframe details, texture maps and environmental lighting information of products in one smooth workflow.

Greg Fischer, Senior Engineer at LunarG, released a new white paper describing functionality in spriv-tools and glslang which allows the user to do dead code elimination in SPIR-V shaders across stages. This functionality also can be used to trim trailing dead components from aggregate input and output variables in the shaders. Many drivers do these cross-stage optimizations automatically under the covers, but some drivers may not. These optimizations can have a significant impact on a shader’s performance and size.

Khronos Group President Neil Trevett was honored with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement at The Polys - WebXR Awards. Cesium’s Patrick Cozzi presented the award stating, “Neil’s impact on the open 3D ecosystem is felt in practically every pixel that is rendered. His consensus-driven leadership at NVIDIA, The Khronos Group, and the Metaverse Standards Forum has facilitated cross-industry collaborations leading to so many open standards, including glTF, Vulkan, WebGL, OpenCL, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES. He masterfully knowns when to roll up his sleeves and when to create space for others. He listens to all perspectives and patiently seeks alignment - and translates vocabulary - across the industry.”

Congratulations Neil! We couldn’t be more proud.

NVK, the open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA hardware in Mesa, is now ready for prime time. The new merge request gets rid of the non-conformant implementation warnings and changes the Meson configuration option for NVK from nouveau-experimental to just nouveau. This will act as a signal to distros that it’s now time to start shipping NVK to users. NVK will be part of Mesa 24.1 and you should expect to see it in either the spring or fall release of your favorite Linux distro. NVK is now a conformant Vulkan 1.3 implementation on Turing (RTX 2000 and GTX 1600 series), Ampere (RTX 3000 series), and Ada (RTX 4000 series) GPUs.