Once Standalone gets to a stage where it supports running OpenXR applications, the final aspect of the project will be some sort of user interface. That is, how will users of our headset be able to select and launch OpenXR (or WebXR) applications without needing to link it with an external device?
The solution is this: A custom launcher. We develop our own OpenXR-based application that exposes a launcher environment to the user. In this launcher environment, the user can ideally browse installed OpenXR applications, browse the internet to download more, or launch WebXR experiences on the internet. In addition, we would want to expose basic OS functionalities, e.g. a shell interface, file browsing, windows, etc.
An example of an existing launcher environment —that we will likely end up copying a lot from —is Meta Horizon OS, illustrated below:
More details can be found on this project's Notion page
This is a Godot project, so setting up will involve first downloading Godot, and then opening this project in Godot.
This project uses Godot v4.5, which can be downloaded here. After the .zip file is downloaded, you can follow the rest this video for the remaining setup. This will likely take you less than two minutes.
Now that you Godot is installed, you'll want to download the Standalone Launcher projeect onto your computer. To do this, you're going to clone this github repository. This will download the current state of the project onto your computer, in addition to allowing you to make local changes, and then later push those changes back into the project.
To clone the repository, follow this tutorial. Ensure to remember where (i.e. the path to the folder) you clone the repository to within your file system.
You're now ready to open the project! First, open Godot if it's not already open, and you should see a screen similar to what is shown below:
From here, click on "Import", and then navigate to and select the folder where you cloned the Standalone Launcher repository. In the example below, the repo was cloned to C:/Users/ntabl/dev/GodotProjects/standalone-launcher
If successful, the project should open once you click "Import" on the final screen, and you should now be able to see an editor window open in the project. Something like this:
With that, you're all set to contribute. Get to building!