Google Unveils New Preview of Android XR Development Tools

Alright, so get this. Google, out of the blue, rolled out this thing—Android XR SDK’s Developer Preview 2. Was I expecting it? Not really. But here we are. They dropped it after the first peek last year, with all sorts of new bells and whistles. “Wider support for immersive video,” they say, plus some fancy adaptive UI stuff, hand-tracking in ARCore for Jetpack. It’s like they’re trying to jazz up our boring old reality.

Announced during Google I/O, because why not? They clearly want developers to have more standardized tools for cranking out their own XR apps or tweaking Android ones for headsets. Makes sense, I guess.

Here’s the kicker—support for 180° and 360° stereoscopic video, thanks to MV-HEVC format. Honestly, never heard of it? But they say it’s a big deal for 3D video. So, it must be.

Now, Jetpack Compose for XR hops on board, letting UI layouts adapt across XR displays. This thing uses something called SubspaceModifier and SpatialExternalSurface. No clue what these do exactly, but the name alone sounds kind of important.

Oh, and let’s not forget hand-tracking in ARCore for Jetpack. They’ve got like 26 gesture joints or something. It’s a whole thing now for developers who want to integrate hand-tracking shenanigans into their apps.

Material Design for XR got a makeover too. Apparently, this will help apps adapt effortlessly to XR. Though I doubt “effortless” means what they think it means!

Here’s the fun part: most developers don’t even have access to Android XR headsets yet. Talk about putting the cart before the horse, right? Samsung’s Project Moohan and these XREAL glasses are supposed to launch later, so hold your horses. Meanwhile, the Android XR Emulator is a lifeline.

By the way, improvements on this Emulator include AMD GPU support and better integration with Android Studio. That’s gotta be music to some developer’s ears out there.

Unity, that beloved game engine, isn’t slacking either. They’ve got their Pre-Release version 2 of Unity OpenXR. Performance bumps with Dynamic Refresh Rate and SpaceWarp support via Shader Graph are on offer. Let’s just hope all these fancy terms mean something cool in real life.

Speaking of real life, Unity’s Mixed Reality template now has hand mesh occlusion and other mind-boggling tech stuff. It’s like they’re preparing us for a sci-fi movie. Android XR Samples for Unity are out too, to give devs a head start. Stuff like hand and face tracking, passthrough—everything you didn’t know you needed.

Oh, but Android XR is still kinda flying under the radar, even at Google I/O. They’re planning on pushing Android XR onto more partner devices and maybe these smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster? Word is, there are two versions on the way—one like Ray-Ban Meta Glasses and another with onboard displays for reading stuff. Man, we live in weird times.

Anyway—wait, no. Right! You can dig deeper into this Android XR Developer Preview thing if you’re curious. It’s got all the juicy tidbits you might need to dive into this brave new world. Happy exploring!