Google Unveils New Preview of Android XR Development Tools

Google’s rolling out this new Android XR thing—second Developer Preview, they call it. Happened sometime after last year. Honestly, I lose track of these releases. Anyway, they say it’s got more features, like immersive video stuff, something about UI layouts, and oh, hand-tracking in ARCore. Feels like they’re throwing a lot at us, right?

So, during this Google I/O event—can’t remember when exactly—they mentioned a bunch of new tools for developers. Think they want folks to either create fresh XR apps or, like, turn their regular Android apps into ones that play nicely with headsets. Makes sense, in a way.

They’re talking support for these 180° and 360° videos, using MV-HEVC format. If that means anything to you, great. It’s apparently a big deal in video codecs for 3D…or something.

Jetpack Compose for XR is another thing. No clue why that sticks out to me. Maybe it’s the name—Jetpack sounds fun. It helps with adaptive UI layouts. Tools like SubspaceModifier and SpatialExternalSurface are in the mix. Google’s really pushing this whole standardized design thing across devices. Kind of like they want your phone and headset to be pals.

There’s some image I saw about material design. It’s probably significant—looked fancy, at least. But back to what’s interesting: hand-tracking, right? Now there are these 26 posed joints or something. Clearly geared toward developers looking to mess around with gestures.

The Material Design has been beefed up too. They say it’ll help apps adjust to XR stuff easily. I guess that’s good considering most developers don’t have these official headsets yet. A couple of names like Samsung Project Moohan and XREAL Project Aura popped up. Sounds futuristic, doesn’t it?

Emulators are, like, super critical here since not many can get the hardware. Google’s worked on supporting AMD GPUs and making things run smoother in Android Studio. That should benefit folks diving into app testing.

Unity jumps in here too. It’s a big name in game development—probably the biggest for XR. Seems they’ve added stuff to boost performance: Dynamic Refresh Rate, SpaceWarp, all that jazz. They’ve got mixed reality templates too. Realistic hand mesh occlusion and persistent anchors are mentioned… Whatever that means on a practical level, it’s progress.

There are sample projects for Unity now, showing off bits like hand tracking and plane tracking. Could give developers a nudge in the right direction.

And yeah, Android XR wasn’t exactly the center of attention at Google I/O, but Google’s making moves. They’re talking about expanding Android XR to more devices, even hinting at new smart glasses with eyewear big names like Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. I mean, who knows what that’ll look like in real life?

Supposedly there are gonna be two types of these glasses. One might be like the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, and another with built-in displays for basic tasks. A glimpse into the future, maybe?

There’s more info somewhere… probably a developer preview link, if you’re keen on diving into the nitty-gritty details of what’s new and whatnot. Give it a look if you’d like.