Create OpenXR device driver/custom runtime

I was wondering if there is any info/tutorial on how to create a OpenXR device driver or custom runtime? I could not find any info on this. Is this non-public info that can only be obtained by device manufacturers?

There are a couple of open source OpenXR runtimes you can dig into.

This is an advanced multi-platform runtime with support for many OpenXR extensions, its own compositor, and several devices.

This is a simple OpenXR runtime with minimal features that wraps a lower-level platform SDK for Pimax devices on Windows (otherwise Pimax only supports OpenXR through SteamVR).


Depending on what you are trying to do, a full custom runtime might not be necessary, and perhaps an API layer implementing only a subset of OpenXR is sufficient to run alongside a full OpenXR runtime.

This is a skeleton API layer to get started on overriding OpenXR APIs or to provide support for OpenXR extensions on top of an existing runtime.

I’m trying to find time to extend that template and write tutorials around it to show how to create overlays, manipulate inputs and implement extensions, however I am still months away from these tutorials being public.

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