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Volume Graphics releases new generation of CT Software

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–Volume Graphics announced the latest generation of its software solutions for non-destructive quality assurance with industrial computed tomography (CT): Version 3.3 of VGSTUDIO MAX, VGSTUDIO, VGMETROLOGY, and VGinLINE.

VGSTUDIO MAX software is used for the analysis and visualization of industrial computed tomography (CT) data and covers all requirements related to metrology, defect detection and assessment, material properties, and simulation.

Using the new version, customers can determine the surfaces of multi-material components, export measurement and analysis results to store them centrally in quality-management software, automate inspection processes more flexibly based on text recognition, and translate real CT data into volume meshes for simulation.

To further support their customers, Volume Graphics has also added a Technical Consulting unit that provides professional consulting and evaluation services.

“With version 3.3 of our software solutions, we are once again laying the foundation for customers to make their processes smarter,” says Christof Reinhart, CEO and co-founder of Volume Graphics GmbH.

“For example, using the new data export, metrology data derived with the tremendous measurement capabilities of our software can be seamlessly shared with QA systems, where the values can then be combined and checked over time. More than ever before, this new feature enables customers to better integrate leading-edge CT technology into their existing software landscape. The new export feature is based on the native support of the widely used Q-DAS format, which makes using results in third-party statistical or analysis software especially easy.”

An overview of the innovations in VGSTUDIO MAX 3.3: Multi-material surface determination

–A new mode of the local-adaptive-surface determination enables the simultaneous determination of the surfaces of each material within a volume in one go
–This significantly simplifies the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing of multi-material objects, e.g., the position of metal pins of a connector relative to the plastic housing
–The new mode also facilitates segmentation of multi-material objects

Support of native data export in Q-DAS format

–There is now native support for data export in Q-DAS format for both VGSTUDIO MAX and the VGMETROLOGY metrology solution, as well as the VGinLINE solution for automated CT inspection
–Companies that still work with traditional measurement systems can switch to this comprehensive CT measurement technology without encountering software hurdles or having to forego their established processes for further statistical evaluation
–Export of detailed, CT-based measurement and analysis results (coordinate measurement, nominal/actual comparison, wall thickness analysis, porosity/inclusion analysis, fiber composite material analysis) is now enabled in the common Q-DAS data exchange format

OCR-based automation
–New optical character recognition (OCR) allows customers to read out text in CT scans, such as object identifiers, and store the recognized text in their meta information
–In automated inspection workflows, cavity markers in CT scans of injection molded or cast components can be recognized and the right reference object or the appropriate analysis in VGinLINE jobs can then be selected depending on the respective cavity
–At the same time, the recognized text improves the traceability of the results, since the information about the cavities can be included in the reports

 

Volume meshing for simulations
–With the new Volume Meshing Module, users can create accurate and high-quality tetrahedral volume meshes from their CT scans for use in mechanical, fluid, thermal, electrical, and other FEM simulations in third party software
–This is based directly on the subvoxel-accurate surface determination for scanned parts or material samples consisting of one or more materials
–The individual components of multi-material objects are translated into volume meshes with congruent tetrahedron faces and shared nodes at material interfaces
–The complete workflow from CT scan to volume mesh is covered
–Generated volume meshes can be exported in common .pat and .inp file formats
–Each cell of the generated volume mesh can be loaded with additional information required for simulation, such as fiber orientations, fiber volume fractions, porosity volume fractions, or gray values

Backed by 20 years’ experience in industrial CT, the new Technical Consulting unit analyzes the specific requirements of each customer’s application(s), creates optimal software configurations and general CT hardware specifications, and offers complete evaluations as a contract service

Volume Graphics
www.volumegraphics.com

ThingWorx 8.5 coming in late summer 2019

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ThingWorx 8.5 combines new capabilities with domain-specific solutions to serve the digital transformation needs of industrial enterprises worldwide.

Among the new and enhanced capabilities are tools that simplify the composition and deployment of solutions. Customers will be able to configure applications faster and deploy them across multiple sites and geographies. For those who want more readymade solutions, ThingWorx also offers pre-built, pre-configured capabilities for engineering, manufacturing, and service. This latest version of ThingWorx brings enhanced integration with Microsoft Azure IoT and includes additional tools for rolling out solutions at an enterprise scale.

The new ThingWorx Navigate Digital Change Management Application enables internal and external users to actively participate in change management. The series of ThingWorx Navigate Contribute Apps will expand on NavigateView suite, which makes information easily available and facilitates collaboration across the enterprise. Powered by the digital thread, engineers have real-time access to connected product data in ThingWorx to drive the design of next-generation products.

Manufacturing
ThingWorx 8.5 is now compatible with Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Analytics. Additionally, PTC will be releasing ThingWorx Kepware Edge to provide flexible deployment of reliable and secure connectivity for dispersed equipment.

Service
PTC’s service solution suite enables service organizations to transform from cost centers to profit centers and drive product and service innovation through new IIoT-enabled business models. The service optimization solution allows companies to improve margins by minimizing truck rolls and increasing first time-fix rates. With ThingWorx 8.5, digital
service delivery is enhanced through a deepened integration with Microsoft Azure,
enabling manufacturers to now use the ThingWorx Software Content Management App
with the Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge.

PTC
ptc.com

PTC announces initiatives for its AR business

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PTC announced  initiatives to fuel its AR business and strengthen the Vuforia Augmented Reality (AR) platform. These initiatives include enhanced 3D AR model targets, leveraging Azure Spatial Anchor Services, a collaboration with Matterport to further the PTC enterprise reach into factories and other spaces, and the acquisition of an AR services agency, TWNKLS.

“AR redefines how the enterprise works. Across all industrial use cases including
manufacturing, engineering, service and training, AR is improving productivity, reducing
waste, and increasing worker safety and compliance. AR empowers organizations to
digitally transform their products, processes, and people,” said Jim Heppelmann, president
and CEO, PTC. “Our strategic alliances, acquisitions, and groundbreaking technology
highlight PTC’s commitment to helping industrial companies succeed with their digital
transformation initiatives.”

Create step-by-step AR instructions with Vuforia Expert Capture
Industrial customers can use Vuforia Expert Capture to quickly and easily create step-by-step instructions when and where they do their work, leveraging Microsoft HoloLens’ location-aware capabilities enabled by Azure Spatial Anchor Services. Front-line workers can then be safely and effectively guided through procedures by digital content presented at relevant locations in the physical environment. This feature improves the accuracy and speed of educating workers, and reduces training costs.

Vuforia Engine 8.3 enhanced with AI
In addition to providing intuitive AR user interactions, Vuforia Engine 8.3 offers robust AR experiences by harnessing the power of deep learning to provide target recognition capabilities based on the customer’s 3D CAD model. AI-powered, model-based recognition enables a product or machine to be recognized from difficult angles, even in poor lighting environments – enabling easier, faster, and more accurate user experiences.

PTC invests in Matterport to visualize factories
PTC has invested in and partnered with Matterport, a company that offers immersive 3D
technology and spatial capture solutions. By partnering with Matterport, PTC is offering the first AR solution with a focus on factories, plants, and other spaces – and the people who operate them. PTC’s enhanced Vuforia offerings give customers the ability to unify
their factory data and allow them to visualize and interact with a digital twin. The
collaborative solution provides customers an easy way to scan their facility and convert it
into a usable 3D mesh using a Matterport compatible camera.

PTC acquires TWNKLS to help customers deploy and adopt augmented reality
The Netherlands-based TWNKLS is a specialized AR company that develops tailor-made AR applications and experiences and provides AR services to solve the specific challenges faced by enterprise companies. The acquisition will accelerate PTC’s AR strategy as well as enable customers to realize faster time-to-value.

PTC’s Vuforia Experience Platform has been adopted by hundreds of companies
worldwide, including Aggreko, Fujitsu, Global Foundries, Howden, and Volvo.

PTC
ptc.com

Virtalis uses HOOPS Exchange to create rich data

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Tech Soft 3D, a leading provider of software development toolkits to engineering software companies, announced that Virtalis is using HOOPS Exchange to create rich data sets that fuel enterprise data models that serve as the visualization backbone for multiple types of applications across the enterprise. Virtalis is a pioneer in the AR/VR industry and provider of immersive visualization solutions that cover the full lifecycle of the product, from conceptual design to distribution.

Visionary Render is Virtalis’ flagship platform for importing and visualizing large datasets from a range of sources, while maintaining all the geometry, naming hierarchies, metadata, and product & manufacturing information (PMI). Virtalis is focused on supporting industrial applications and manufacturers creating large complex products for aerospace, defense and automotive, as well as construction, geoscience, consumer goods, and more. Accurately supporting the formats used in this wide range of industries is critical because companies need to visualize large amounts of data from diverse sources. Being able to review the data in an immersive environment on a one-to-one scale, rather than seeing a 2D view of a 3D object is effective for communicating to people who aren’t skilled in CAD.

“When we import CAD data with HOOPS Exchange, we get the data that we expect,” said Barry King, Product Owner at Virtalis. “Our customers expect to see reliable data when they’re making important decisions based on visualizations and having reliable and dependable data is one of the most important things for them. What’s great about HOOPS is that it supports almost all the formats, including VRML. Our customers have legacy data, and we rely on the fact that HOOPS Exchange supports those formats. Often our customers will challenge us with data and we can say, ‘no problem.’ We can support this wide variety of formats because we have HOOPS behind us.”

Virtalis goes beyond visualizing CAD data from an external view by immersing users in the environment where the model may live, allowing them to experience the product.

“We’re looking at products in the context of where they sit,” said Gavin England, Product Marketing Manager at Virtalis. “We could be looking at a product installed inside a factory, or a building structure coming from building information modeling (BIM) data. In addition to the core formats, being able to bring in data like Revit is key as well.”

HOOPS Exchange provides access to a broad range of data including B-Rep geometry, metadata, PMI, model tree, views, persistent IDs, styles, construction geometry, visualization and more – all without depending on any CAD system. This wide-ranging access proved to be an important element in Virtalis’ decision-making process.

“When we initially were getting to grips and integrating it, Tech Soft 3D was really responsive and collaborated with us to get the results that we needed,” said King. “When we communicate an issue, we always get it fixed in the next release, and the releases come out steadily and reliably.” That’s very important and a real benefit for us. Whether they’re working with engineering or science data, a lot of customers are learning how much time and money they can save by leveraging immersive visualization and not having to build physical prototypes. This helps them make better business decisions – and Tech Soft 3D plays a critical role in supporting those workflows.”

Tech Soft 3D
www.techsoft3d.com

COMSOL Multiphysics includes tools to support 5G, IoT design

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COMSOL announced the latest advances in its COMSOL Multiphysics software to support microwave and RF engineers working on 5G, IoT, automotive radars and satellite communications. With these tools, designers can model different PCB materials and study how they affect the performance of microwave and millimeter wave circuits. Several of the application examples to guide designers will be introduced at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2019.

“We are particularly excited to demonstrate how to set up and run a simulation to design and evaluate a Grounded Coplanar Waveguide (GCPW) line,” said Jiyoun Munn, technical product manager of the RF Module at COMSOL. “Connectors and low loss materials are the key components across all electronic devices and systems. Their reliability is critical in circuits that transmit and receive information.”

The use of simulation to achieve low insertion loss and reliable circuit performance in a design, requires choosing accurate material properties such as relative dielectric constant and loss tangent, while also considering surface roughness effects in the computer model.
“As the frequency increases, maintaining the impedance become more complex, as small quirks arising from the geometry or selected materials can be magnified,” explains Bill Rosas, Cofounder of Signal Microwave. “Simulation allows us to ensure that these critical pieces of RF infrastructure are optimized for 5G communications.”

Designing components ready for 5G, IoT, automotive radars and satellite communications will require multiphysics modeling. Using COMSOL Multiphysics microwave and RF designers can couple electromagnetic simulations with heat transfer, structural mechanics, fluid flow, and other physical phenomena, allowing them to represent coupled physics effects as they would occur in the real world. That means being able to accurately investigate designs and fully benefit from the virtual prototyping capabilities multiphysics simulation offers.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com/rf-module

ASCENT unveils 2020 Autodesk Courseware roadmap

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In conjunction with the Autodesk 2020 software releases, ASCENT Center for Technical Knowledge has released its fundamental guides for the core software titles: AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor and Revit. As an Autodesk Authorized Publisher, ASCENT has also published their 2020 Courseware Roadmap that includes over 60 titles planned for release throughout 2019.

 

“While our team is known for our off-the-shelf, comprehensive Autodesk courseware, we also see many design engineering firms request help creating custom documentation,” says Paul Burden, director of product development for ASCENT. “Users can quickly become productive when learning from blended content consisting of reference, video, and project elements that reflects their unique in-house workflows and processes. In addition, many of our Autodesk Training Center customers and Academic clients benefit from courseware assembled from our extensive library of learning modules. Using bespoke collections of our standard modules enables them to offer a roster of differentiated classes giving students unique learning experiences and varied course options.”

Autodesk 2020 Learning Guides Now Available from ASCENT:

ASCENT’s offerings include learning materials for students, instructors, professionals and individuals, designed for self-paced learning, instructor-led training, and on-the-job reference. Learning Guides include practice exercises and, in applicable guides, Autodesk Certification Objectives to help those preparing for Autodesk Professional Certification Exams. Instructor Guides contain the same instructional content as a Learning Guide, plus include answers to the chapter review questions, timing suggestions to help deliver the course, and instructor presentation files.

Maple 2019’s data analysis capabilities identify biomarkers of several cancers

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The ability to leverage complex data as a strategic asset is becoming increasingly critical, but the current labor market has a shortage of resources in big data analytics. Companies are faced with several challenges related to the inadequate resources necessary to process data. A long-time Maple user and quantum mechanics researcher, Marvin Weinstein, refers to the problem of extracting meaning from large data sets as, “How do we find a needle in a multi-dimensional haystack, when we don’t know what a needle is, and we don’t know if there is a needle in the haystack?”

Dynamic Quantum Clustering (DQC) accomplishes this feat by creating a density map of data using DQC’s proprietary Maple library, and Maple 2019 visualization tools. The result of a DQC analysis is a Maple animation that provides a visual record of the complex computations going on behind the scene. According to Marvin, Maple animations have been a big part of DQC’s success because they reveal answers without the complex mathematics. He says that, “these animations sell our product because they leverage the human ability to spot patterns developing in time and space.”

With Maple’s prototyping abilities and customizable features, Marvin was able to get DQC up and running within a week. Marvin confesses that “whenever I can avoid having to do things [manually], I do so.” By using the DQC compiled library within Maple, it was possible for Quantum Insights to have a powerful GUI without having to build the interface from scratch. Marvin believes that time is often wasted with unnecessary coding and analysis tasks, and exploits many of the built-in features of Maple to save time drive his research forward.

The core of DQC is an algorithm that maps a problem of unsupervised clustering to a problem in quantum mechanics. It uses quantum evolution to identify correlated information and reveals the details of the process through a Maple animation. This animation typically reveals hidden and unexpected insights into complex data. Marvin asserts that the aim of DQC is to “let the data speak for itself.” The advantage of working without making assumptions or hypotheses, without cleaning the data, and without the need for expert knowledge means that DQC is a data exploration method that is faster, cheaper and more efficient than current methods.

One of DQC’s major accomplishments thus far has been the identification of several biomarkers strongly correlated with multiple cancers. According to Marvin, TCGA analysis was selected as the initial step towards cancer research because cancer is a problem that everyone understands to be a big deal, and “we’ve all lost people we love to cancer.” The hope was that better clustering methods would allow mRNA from various tumor samples to better classify tumors into biologically relevant groups. The study identified 48 of 73,000 mRNA expressions that defined all five different cancer types. This analysis, published in Nature Scientific Reports, has demonstrated the ability to provide an accurate diagnosis of cancer type, based on molecular information alone, and has further revealed significant sub-typing of cancer cells, beyond what pathologists can currently achieve. The sensitivity to variation in mRNA expression patterns is the “holy grail” of precision medicine, because it promises to tell us which tumors are likely to respond to a drug and which tumors will not respond. Moreover, the analysis showed that DQC significantly outperformed tSNE-HDBScan, the current gold standard clustering method used in cancer data analytics.

Now, Marvin is working in pharmacogenomics to offer better diagnosis and treatment methods for cancer and other diseases. His company, Quantum Insights, is working towards developing effective, data-driven strategies. While Quantum Insight’s initial focus was cancer, the goal is to expand this research into other healthcare applications. Marvin believes that the DQC technique will help save lives wherever better analytics are required. Other successful applications of his research include Alzheimer’s data, detection of contraband nuclear material, analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data, and other areas that utilize large amounts of data.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

OnScale raises $10 Million from Intel Capital and Gradient Ventures

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OnScale, an emerging leader in Cloud-enabled engineering simulation software, announces $10M in Series A funding led by Intel Capital and Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture capital fund. Additional investors include Thornton Tomasetti, Stage 2 Capital, Cultivation Capital, and CampbellKlein.

OnScale, which has grown considerably since emerging from stealth in early 2018, will use the new investment to drive global expansion, respond to increasing demand, and accelerate development of its Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions for complex, real-world engineering applications.

OnScale CAE tools are based on proprietary multiphysics solvers that were developed and validated over 30 years by one of the largest engineering consulting firms in the world for DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and large commercial customers. The CAE solvers were architected for highly parallel mainframe computers to handle very large engineering simulation problems and are a perfect fit for modern cloud-based, high-performance computing. OnScale was spun out of Thornton Tomasetti in 2017 and is led by Chief Executive Officer Ian Campbell, along with a strong leadership team with over 100 years of combined experience in CAE software.

The company has established a large and growing base of customers, including a number of Fortune 100 companies. OnScale gives engineers a wealth of design insights and highly accurate simulation results up to 100x faster than legacy CAE offerings. Current OnScale solutions address the simulation needs of Semiconductor and MEMS, 5G mobile, next-gen biomedical, infrastructure safety, and autonomous vehicle markets. The company is focusing on improving OnScale’s user interface, expanding the breadth of physics solver capabilities, and forming partnerships with other software companies to provide seamless engineering workflows.

“With strategic investors like Intel Capital and Google’s Gradient Ventures, OnScale is well positioned to help engineers of all disciplines solve their design challenges,” said Campbell. “Created for engineers, by engineers, our mission is to usher in the future of engineering. With this investment, we will continue to empower innovators who are creating the future of technology.”

“As technology systems become more complex, next-generation computer aided engineering software will become integral to design and deployment,” said Dave Flanagan, vice president and senior managing director at Intel Capital. “OnScale’s highly scalable CAE solution leverages the power of the cloud and advanced multiphysics to model highly complex systems, helping customers solve the toughest design challenges”. Investment Director Arun Chetty will join OnScale’s board.

“Leaps in technology require paradigm shifts in engineering, and the combination of world-class multiphysics solvers, AI, and highly scalable cloud-based HPC provide an opportunity for such a paradigm shift in how we create world-changing technologies. That is why we’re excited to welcome OnScale and its team of software experts to the Gradient portfolio.” said Zach Bratun, Partner, Gradient Ventures.

OnScale
onscale.com

In, April Engineering Leaders Will Gather at COFES to Look at Technology Convergence

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The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software has a new home in 2019. Just in time for its 20th anniversary, the even will move from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Menlo Park, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley.

The conference is think-tank event where those involved with engineering technology industry come together to discuss best practices, share ideas for managing change, and find strategies to achieve financial success. This year, the event takes place April 7 to 9.

It’s relocation is obviously no accident.

“With this move, we’re showing that engineering software is moving into the future of more high technology products,” said Jim Brown, president of engineering consulting firm Tech-Clarity and a member of the COFES Institute board of directors. The institute provides leadership for COFES.

The meeting this year includes subjects like CAD and PLM software, but also addresses new methods of engineering design as well as new technologies making their way into the engineering realm.

“There’s so much convergence of new technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, connected products and 3D printing  that are starting to come into the design world for things like generative design,” Brown said. “It’s kind of up to as the engineering software community to come together as users of the software and as the academics and industry thought leaders and software vendors to put our heads together to figure out how we can do more with these technologies.”

To illustrate the changes the engineering field has recently experienced, Brown pointed to the shift from products, like automobiles, that had previously been strictly mechanical in nature, to items that now commonly include mechanical, electrical, and even software systems.

“Now a car is trying to schedule your service appointments and soon as part of smart city initiatives it will be communicating with other cars and with traffic lights,” Brown said. “Our tools, our mindsets have to change. The engineering software community is excited for these changes, but we need to determine how to react to them and how to support them.”

For nearly two decades, COFES had been owned and run by Cyon Research. It recently moved to operating as a nonprofit.

Last week, conference leaders announced that Microsoft will deliver a keynote on the COFES 2019 theme of technology convergence—the pairing of two or more technologies in a single device–from a software perspective.

The trend of convergence creates new challenges and opportunities for any company developing software solutions for design and manufacturing.

Microsoft leaders will share their insights regarding the possibilities the cloud can bring to companies for competitive advantages when it comes to software solutions for design and manufacturing, said Diego Tamburini, Microsoft principal industry lead, cloud for engineering and manufacturing

The need to effectively design in this new reality will become increasingly more important, he said. While companies are dealing with convergence with brute force, the software tools do not exist yet to manage the expanded, evolving design process, he added.

Microsoft’s keynote is titled “What Does the Manufacturer of the Future Look Like? A Microsoft Perspective.”

Keeping up with the COFES theme of convergence, Microsoft will share thought leadership in the areas of connected products, connected services, factory of the future, intelligent supply chains, and the strategic trends that Microsoft is witnessing and their vision of a cloud-enabled marketplace of solutions enabling best-in-class solutions that work together, Tamburini said.

 

 

 

 

 

Khronos Group Releases Provisional Standard for AR and VR Devices

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The Khronos Group of Beaverton, Ore., an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies that come together to create advanced acceleration standards, has released the OpenXR 0.90 provisional specification. OpenXR is a unifying, royalty-free, open standard that provides high-performance access to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)— collectively known as XR—platforms and devices.

The new specification can be found on the Khronos website and is released in provisional form to enable developers and implementers to provide feedback at the OpenXR forum.

The OpenXR 0.90 provisional release specifies a cross-platform application programming interface (API) that enables XR hardware platform vendors to expose the functionality of their runtime systems. By accessing a common set of objects and functions corresponding to application lifecycle, rendering, tracking, frame timing, and input, which are frustratingly different across existing vendor-specific APIs, software developers can run their applications across multiple XR systems with minimal porting effort—significantly reducing industry fragmentation, said Brent Insko, lead VR architect at Intel and the OpenXR working group chair.

The Khronos OpenXR working group was formed in early 2017 with the support and participation of leading XR companies. Throughout the development of the specification, multiple Khronos members have been developing independent implementations to ensure a robust and complete specification. Many of these implementations are becoming available for developers to evaluate including the Monado OpenXR open source implementation from Collabora, and the OpenXR runtime for Windows mixed reality headsets from Microsoft. Also, the Unreal Engine from Epic plans to continue to support OpenXR.

“OpenXR seeks to simplify AR/VR software development, enabling applications to reach a wider array of hardware platforms without having to port or re-write their code and subsequently allowing platform vendors supporting OpenXR access to more applications,” Insko said “The OpenXR provisional specification—together with the runtimes publicly available at launch and coming in the next few weeks—will enable hands-on, cross-platform testing by application and engine developers.

“The working group welcomes developer feedback to ensure an OpenXR 1.0 specification that truly meets the needs of the XR industry,” he said.

Added Nandan Nayampally, vice president and general manager, client line of business at the semiconductor and software company Arm:

“It is significant when so many key players in the industry come together to create an open standard like OpenXR. We look forward to seeing adoption of the new standard, and believe that reducing barriers for cross-platform XR applications accelerates growth, innovation, and diversity in the VR and AR industry.”

Philippe Kalaf, chief executive officer at Collabora said his company was dedicated to royalty-free open standards and open source technologies. He also spoke about Monado, an open-source implementation of the OpenXR spec.

“Monado is an open-source project and codebase to harness and focus wider community effort around XR technologies,” he said. “Collabora plans to provide the technical foundation and industry leadership to accelerate the development and deployment of XR technologies on Linux while providing XR device vendors the choice to use and contribute to a Linux-based platform for their XR products.”

Microsoft also offered feedback on the new standard.

“Microsoft believes that for mixed reality to thrive, it must be open for everyone: open stores, open browsers and open developer platforms. We’re dedicated to supporting the launch of OpenXR this year on Windows Mixed Reality and HoloLens 2,” said Alex Kipman, technical fellow at Microsoft.

The Khronos Group is an open industry consortium of over 140 leading hardware and software companies creating advanced, royalty-free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics, augmented and virtual reality, vision and machine learning. Khronos standards include Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenGL SC, WebGL, SPIR-V, OpenCL, SYCL, OpenVX, NNEF, COLLADA, OpenXR and glTF.

Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications and to vote at various stages before public deployment. They are able to accelerate the delivery of their platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts.