One of today’s most popular game engines, Unity, is ditching support for OpenVR in a surprising snub to Steam creators at Valve. The company announced the move earlier today, clarifying that it will also be ending support for Samsung’s GearVR and Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform as part of the same decision aimed at improving its operating efficiency.
Valve already confirmed it is working on a replacement for Unity’s lack of official support for its platform that wasn’t expected to affect OpenVR seeing how that particular technology ecosystem is still in active development and hasn’t been effectively abandoned by its creators like Daydream and GearVR were. For reference, OpenVR is the same technology that powers SteamVR, one of today’s most widely used VR APIs and a direct rival of Facebook’s Oculus solutions.
The decision appears to have been rooted in technical reasons, however, as Unity has so far offered support for the aforementioned VR systems through a plugin system that has since been abandoned in favor of more universal support for extended reality headgear. None of the older tech really fits the bill and so Unity Technologies is pulling the plug on them altogether, leaving Valve to figure out how to extend the support moving forward.
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