Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Administration, Android Developer
Since launching the Android XR SDK Developer Preview alongside Samsung, Qualcomm, and Unity final yr, we’ve been blown away by the entire pleasure we’ve been listening to from the broader Android group. Whether or not it is by coding live-streams or native Google Developer Group talks, it has been an impressive expertise taking part in the neighborhood to construct the way forward for XR collectively, and we’re simply getting began.
Immediately we’re excited to share an replace to the Android XR SDK: Developer Preview 2, filled with new options and enhancements that can assist you develop useful and pleasant immersive experiences with acquainted Android APIs, instruments and open requirements created for XR.
At Google I/O, we have now two technical classes associated to Android XR. The primary is Constructing differentiated apps for Android XR with 3D content material, which covers many options current in Jetpack SceneCore and ARCore for Jetpack XR. The long run is now, with Compose and AI on Android XR covers creating XR-differentiated UI and our imaginative and prescient on the intersection of XR with cutting-edge AI capabilities.
What’s new in Developer Preview 2
Because the launch of Developer Preview 1, we’ve been centered on making the APIs simpler to make use of and including new immersive Android XR options. Your suggestions has helped us form the event of the instruments, SDKs, and the platform itself.
With the Jetpack XR SDK, now you can play again 180° and 360° movies, which might be stereoscopic by encoding with the MV-HEVC specification or by encoding view-frames adjacently. The MV-HEVC customary is optimized and designed for stereoscopic video, permitting your app to effectively play again immersive movies at nice high quality. Apps constructed with Jetpack Compose for XR can use the SpatialExternalSurface composable to render media, together with stereoscopic movies.
Utilizing Jetpack Compose for XR, now you can additionally outline layouts that adapt to totally different XR show configurations. For instance, use a SubspaceModifier to specify the dimensions of a Subspace as a proportion of the machine’s really useful viewing measurement, so a panel effortlessly fills the area it is positioned in.
Materials Design for XR now helps extra element overrides for TopAppBar, AlertDialog, and ListDetailPaneScaffold, serving to your large-screen enabled apps that use Materials Design effortlessly adapt to the brand new world of XR.
In ARCore for Jetpack XR, now you can observe palms after requesting the suitable permissions. Arms are a set of 26 posed hand joints that can be utilized to detect hand gestures and produce a complete new stage of interplay to your Android XR apps:
For extra steering on growing apps for Android XR, try our Android XR Fundamentals codelab, the updates to our Whats up Android XR pattern undertaking, and a brand new model of JetStream with Android XR help.
The Android XR Emulator has additionally acquired updates to stability, help for AMD GPUs, and is now totally built-in throughout the Android Studio UI.
Builders utilizing Unity have already efficiently created and ported present video games and apps to Android XR. Immediately, you possibly can improve to the Pre-Launch model 2 of the Unity OpenXR: Android XR package deal! This replace provides many efficiency enhancements comparable to help for Dynamic Refresh Price, which optimizes your app’s efficiency and energy consumption. Shaders made with Shader Graph now help SpaceWarp, making it simpler to make use of SpaceWarp to cut back compute load on the machine. Hand meshes are actually uncovered with occlusion, which allows reasonable hand visualization.
Try Unity’s improved Combined Actuality template for Android XR, which now consists of help for occlusion and protracted anchors.
We lately launched Android XR Samples for Unity, which show capabilities on the Android XR platform comparable to hand monitoring, airplane monitoring, face monitoring, and passthrough.
The Firebase AI Logic for Unity is now in public preview! This makes it simple so that you can combine gen AI into your apps, enabling the creation of AI-powered experiences with Gemini and Android XR. The Firebase AI Logic totally helps Gemini’s capabilities, together with multimodal enter and output, and bi-directional streaming for immersive conversational interfaces. Constructed with manufacturing readiness in thoughts, Firebase AI Logic is built-in with core Firebase providers like App Verify, Distant Config, and Cloud Storage for enhanced safety, configurability, and information administration. Study extra about this on the Firebase weblog or go straight to the Gemini API utilizing Vertex AI in Firebase SDK documentation to get began.
Persevering with to construct the long run collectively
Our dedication to open requirements continues with the glTF Interactivity specification, in collaboration with the Khronos Group. which will probably be supported in glTF fashions rendered by Jetpack XR later this yr. Fashions utilizing the glTF Interactivity specification are self-contained interactive property that may have many pre-programmed behaviors, like rotating objects on a button press or altering the colour of a cloth over time.
Android XR will probably be obtainable first on Samsung’s Mission Moohan, launching later this yr. Quickly after, our companions at XREAL will launch the subsequent Android XR machine. Codenamed Mission Aura, it’s a transportable and tethered machine that offers customers entry to their favourite Android apps, together with these which have been constructed for XR. It would launch as a developer version, particularly so that you can start creating and experimenting. The perfect information? With the acquainted instruments you utilize to construct Android apps immediately, you possibly can construct for these gadgets too.
The Google Play Retailer can be preparing for Android XR. It would record supported 2D Android apps on the Android XR Play Retailer when it launches later this yr. In case you are engaged on an Android XR differentiated app, you will get it prepared for the massive launch and be one of many first differentiated apps on the Android XR Play Retailer:
And we all know a lot of you’re excited for the way forward for Android XR on glasses. We’re shaping the developer expertise now and can share extra particulars on how one can take part later this yr.
To get began creating and growing for Android XR, try developer.android.com/develop/xr the place you can find the entire instruments, libraries, and sources you have to work with the Android XR SDK. Specifically, check out our samples and codelabs.
We welcome your suggestions, ideas, and concepts as you’re serving to form Android XR. Your ardour, experience, and daring concepts are very important as we proceed to develop Android XR collectively. We sit up for seeing your XR-differentiated apps when Android XR gadgets launch later this yr!
Discover this announcement and all Google I/O 2025 updates on io.google beginning Might 22.