OpenXR for Spatial Displays

Write once. Run on any spatial display. DisplayXR is an open platform for spatial displays — OpenXR extension specifications, a reference runtime, and reference implementations — for tracked stereo and multiview lightfield 3D, portable across engines, graphics APIs, and vendor hardware.

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The Problem

Spatial displays deserve a common interface

OpenXR standardized how applications talk to headsets and controllers. But a growing category of spatial displays — tracked spatial display monitors, laptops, and related systems — has no equivalent.

Today, every vendor ships its own SDK with its own compositor, its own rendering path, and its own way of handling eye tracking and display geometry. Developers who want to target multiple displays must write and maintain separate integrations for each.

The result is fragmentation: duplicated effort, inconsistent behavior, and a higher barrier for both developers and vendors entering the space.

Without a standard, one app needs five separate SDK integrations for five displays; with DisplayXR, the same app hits one OpenXR target and runs on any display.

What DisplayXR Provides

A practical stack for tracked spatial displays

Runtime

A full OpenXR runtime with native compositors for every major graphics API — no interop layers required.

Extension Specs

Custom OpenXR extensions for display info, window bindings, and spatial display capabilities not covered by standard OpenXR.

Native Compositors

Per-graphics-API compositors (D3D11, D3D12, Vulkan, Metal, OpenGL) that avoid cross-API translation overhead.

Engine Integrations

Unity plugin shipping with UPM support. Unreal plugin in beta (UE 5.3+). Standard engine workflows, no custom forks.

Vendor Display Processor

A clean boundary where vendor-specific processing (weaving, interlacing, calibration) plugs in without touching app code.

Workspace Extensions

XR_EXT_spatial_workspace + XR_EXT_app_launcher — a documented surface for swappable workspace controllers that compose multi-app 3D layouts, drive window placement, and register launcher tiles. The DisplayXR Shell is the reference; OEMs, vertical integrators, kiosks, and AI-agent drivers can ship their own.

Who is this for?

Three audiences, one stack

DisplayXR is layered so app developers, contributors, and display vendors can each pick up exactly the part they need without forking the rest.

App Developers

Writing an OpenXR app for spatial displays?

Standard OpenXR — your existing app code works unchanged. Native compositors mean no Vulkan-interop layer; D3D11, D3D12, Metal, Vulkan, and OpenGL each get their own. Opt into XR_EXT_display_info for 3D-display geometry, eye-tracking modes, and asymmetric (Kooima) projection.

Get started →

Contributors

Want to expand the runtime or platform support?

DisplayXR is open source and vendor-neutral. Add an OpenXR extension, a driver, or a new platform — the native-compositor architecture and the ADRs are documented, and external contributors PR directly against the repo. The roadmap shows where help lands.

How to contribute →

Display Vendors

Making a glasses-free 3D display panel?

Implement the display-processor plug-in for your weaving / depth-mapping / eye-tracking integration — five API variants (D3D11, D3D12, Metal, Vulkan, OpenGL) so your weaver runs natively in whatever graphics API the app uses. Vendor-neutral by design: the runtime ships with no built-in display backend, so every panel integrates through the same plug-in interface.

Plug-in guide →

Shipping a finished 3D-display product?

OEMs and vertical integrators (laptops, monitors, kiosks, CAD / medical / automotive HMIs) can ship the bare runtime, the reference DisplayXR Shell, or their own workspace controller built on XR_EXT_spatial_workspace + XR_EXT_app_launcher — and embed displayxr-mcp to expose the same surface to an AI agent.

Architecture & workspace controllers →

The Ecosystem

More than a runtime

DisplayXR is developing as a full ecosystem — runtime, extensions, engine plugins, projection math, demos, and reference workspace controllers.

Core

displayxr-runtime

Core OpenXR runtime with native compositors for D3D11, D3D12, Vulkan, Metal, and OpenGL — on Windows, macOS, and Android.

displayxr-extensions

OpenXR extension specs and headers for tracked spatial display capabilities.

Engine Plugins

displayxr-unity

Active

Unity engine plugin (UPM package) with eye-tracked stereo rendering, sample scenes, and standalone editor preview.

displayxr-unreal

Beta

Unreal Engine plugin (UE 5.3+) with eye-tracked Kooima stereo, camera- and display-centric rigs, Blueprint components, material expression nodes, and zero-copy atlas handoff. Windows, macOS, Android.

Libraries

displayxr-common

Shared math and common library — off-axis (Kooima) projection, atlas tiling, and window/canvas helpers consumed by the runtime, engine plugins, and demos from a single source of truth.

displayxr-mcp

Active

Tiny embeddable Model Context Protocol server framework, plus the DisplayXR MCP Tools installer that end users download to opt in to AI-agent / voice control. The framework lets the runtime, the reference shell, and any third-party workspace controller expose live spatial state and control to AI agents (Claude Code, voice CLIs, custom drivers); the installer writes a registry capability flag the runtime and shell read at startup.

Demo Applications

displayxr-demo-gaussiansplat

Active

Real-time 3D Gaussian Splatting viewer (.spz / .ply) for spatial displays. macOS + Windows.

displayxr-demo-modelviewer

Active

Glasses-free 3D glTF 2.0 PBR model viewer (OpenXR + Vulkan). Drag-and-drop a .glb / .gltf model.

displayxr-demo-mediaplayer

Active

Spatial media player — photos, GPU-decoded video with synchronized audio, Leia Image Format (LIF) pictures, and folder slideshows, with playback controllable by AI agents. Windows, macOS, Android.

displayxr-demo-avatar

Active

A transparent, click-through 3D avatar that floats over your desktop (OpenXR + native Vulkan) — weaved in 3D with a flat 2D speech bubble beside it, and clicks passing through to whatever is behind. Showcases the see-through transparency and mixed 2D/3D display-zone path.

displayxr-demo-earthview

Beta

Streaming glasses-free 3D city viewer on Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles (OpenXR + Vulkan). Fly the full-scale world camera-style, or double-click to frame a neighborhood as a tabletop diorama. Requires a Google Map Tiles API key.

Workspace Controllers

displayxr-shell-releases

Active

Reference spatial workspace controller — a 3D window manager with multi-app compositing, 2D window capture, dynamic layouts, and focus-adaptive rendering. Ships as a standalone installer; build your own controller for verticals, kiosks, or OEM-branded workspaces using the same extension surface.

Why Now

Spatial computing is not headset-only

Spatial computing is still largely framed around headsets. But spatial displays are becoming a real category — tracked spatial display monitors, laptops, and Android devices are already shipping from Samsung, Acer, Lenovo, ZTE, and Barco, with more vendors on the way.

These devices need a common interface layer. Without one, the ecosystem fragments before it has a chance to grow. DisplayXR brings that missing layer, so developers and hardware vendors can build against a shared interface rather than isolated SDKs.

The end goal is not a parallel standard — it's the standard. DisplayXR's 3D-display extensions are designed to be upstreamed into OpenXR at Khronos (EXT → KHR), with DisplayXR as the open reference implementation, so an app written once runs on any spatial display — exactly as OpenXR did for headsets.

Start building for spatial displays

DisplayXR works in simulation mode — no hardware required. Read the docs, explore the demos, or dive into the source.

Read the Docs Explore Demos View on GitHub