In the Beginning
In the run-up for publically talking about XRTK, it's important to talk about the roads we took to get here and believe me, it's a LOT.
Apart from the base framework that enables a true multi-platform mixed reality environment, we've created the foundations for a multi-tiered framework serving:
Beginner No Coding Required: Perfect for artists, Hackathons, and Quick Prototyping.
Intermediate Customizable: The framework is flexible enough so coders can customize what they need to cover edge cases with ease.
Advanced Extensible: The framework is easy to extend and modify to add additional custom services to meet specific criteria and needs.
To date, the developer population is largely in the Intermediate to Advanced stage with already multiple apps deployed to several stores built on the XRTK. The reason for this is simple, we need to ensure the base framework is fully fit for purpose and optimised for delivering efficient solutions. There have been many breaking changes in the evolution of the framework to meet the demanding needs of the various platforms we support.
Learning and teaching more
As we enter 2020, we feel the foundation has stabilised sufficiently that the framework is ready to get into more hands and to that end, you will see an explosion of education content and more "drag and drop" features (aka the SDK) appearing over the next few months.
Building partnerships
We've also been hard at work building relationships with multiple vendors and positioning the XRTK as the SDK to use for their products in addition to their own API's, this further accelerates XRTK's adoption and broad deployment story, giving you more placed that with a click of a button your project is readily available for more platforms.
The Roadmap ahead
As a sneak peek, this is what we have to look forward to in the coming months:
- A new cross-platform hands system, which is thoroughly optimised and extensible
- Vendor collaboration with more Hands "providers" including some image-based recognition for mobile ar
- New and improved platform recognition system, mainly to cope with everyone using Android (but a little different each time)
- An extended Input Action System that is more scalable and allows more precise behaviours (more on that later)
- The first wave of new SDK features
- More documentation, more tutorials, more videos... You get the picture.
And so, on to 2020 and the sheer explosion that is Mixed Reality. Remember, it's not just AR, it's not just VR, it's everything, everywhere and on as many devices as you like with a flick of a switch.
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