Developers of Oculus Rift games made with the Oculus Unity plugin can now add Windows MR headset support with their existing code.
Facebook first added SteamVR support to the Oculus Unity Integration back in November. In December an update expanded that support, adding VR overlays.
Until now this cross-platform support has been limited to the HTC Vive. The latest update adds official support for Windows MR headsets too. The documentation includes details of how the Oculus Touch APIs relate to the Windows MR controllers.
What This Does And Doesn’t Mean
Like with the HTC Vive support this has no direct user facing consequences. Oculus Store games still can only have Oculus API support ticked in Unity. This change won’t make Windows MR work there. What this does do however is lower the technical barriers to building for Rift first and supporting Windows MR later, or wanting to release on both.
A developer of a game in Unity for the Oculus Rift can now add Windows MR support without having to integrate the separate SteamVR Plugin. Instead of having to manage the separate Oculus & SteamVR integrations they can stick with one. We should of course note the SteamVR Plugin can also be used to support both headsets, but this can’t be used for Oculus Store builds. Ultimately, this means developers building for SteamVR first and then planning to submit to the Oculus Store eventually would have to use the Oculus Integration anyway.
Windows MR is nearing 10% market share in the Steam Hardare survey. Hopefully the combination of that shift and this update prompts more developers to add support for Windows MR.
