How Facebook’s Open Standards Shift Will Cost AR/VR Developers

People wearing Oculus Go headsets in 2018. These devices have already been discontinued. Photo by Bloomberg.

Facebook’s Oculus is going “all in” on support for OpenXR, a royalty-free open standard for AR and VR hardware, the company said Friday. You might think developers would welcome that move with open arms.

Valve, Google, Microsoft, Unity, Epic Games have taken similar steps, so there’s clearly a broader move towards an open standard. Facebook’s decision will make its hardware easier to work with in the long run, which should be good for both developers and Facebook. But some developers—particularly those who have long relied on Facebook’s in-house VR development tools—aren’t thrilled. Switching over will be costly and time-consuming.