Google Unveils New Preview of Android XR Development Tools

Right, so picture this: Google’s released another developer preview for the Android XR SDK. It’s got all these nifty features and improvements, or at least that’s what they’re saying. More support for videos that, you know, make you feel like you’re there, hand-tracking through ARCore — basically, it’s a whole bag of tricks they unleashed at some conference. Google I/O, wasn’t it? That’s where they spilled the beans on new tools for developers to create XR-native apps. Neat, right?

Okay, so now they’re backing 180° and 360° videos. Stereoscopic, they call it. MV-HEVC format, which folks in the know say is pretty sharp for immersive stuff. Honestly, I had to look that up — codecs aren’t exactly my vibe, but someone out there’s geeking out about it.

Then there’s this Jetpack Compose for XR thing. Sounds fancy? It’s all about making UI layouts fit just right, no matter if you’re on a phone, tablet, or headset. They’ve got these things like SubspaceModifier — I mean, sounds like Star Trek, if you ask me. Sorry, that’s my bad, I keep getting sidetracked. Anyway, Jetpack Compose is badged as the toolkit to rule them all in UI design. They hope.

And on the hand-tracking frontier? We’ve got 26 posed joints now, so developers can play around with that. Maybe wave at their digital buddies or something. The tech’s moving that way, I guess. They even rolled out some new samples and guides to help folks get the hang of integrating this handsy stuff into apps.

Material Design for XR — yeah, that’s expanded too. So, apps apparently can adjust to these new dimensions easier. Probably means we’ll have more apps that actually work smoothly in this XR space. Imagine that!

Now, fun fact: a lot of developers don’t even have the official Android XR headsets yet. Go figure. Seems Samsung’s Project Moohan and XREAL Project Aura’s keeping everyone on their toes till later this year. And so the Android XR Emulator remains this critical little helper.

They’ve been polishing up the emulator too, with AMD GPU support and all. So maybe less of those head-banging problems during development. Better integration with Android Studio sounds promising, at least.

Unity’s not sitting back either. They pushed out a pre-release version with some big deals like Dynamic Refresh Rate. Shader Graph seems to be getting a lot of attention too, enhancing SpaceWarp support and all that jazz. Big words for some pretty intricate tech.

Also, they tossed Android XR Samples for Unity into the mix. Hand tracking, plane tracking — the whole shebang. Supposed to give developers a leg up.

Google didn’t exactly steal the show with Android XR at their event, but they’re pushing through. Apparently, they’re teaming up with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster for some smart glasses. Think Ray-Ban Meta Glasses but with extra bits or something. One pair might even let you read texts or navigate, which could be cool.

Wanna dive deeper? There’s more info on the Android XR Developer Preview floating around online, if you’re keen.详