Google Unveils New Preview of Android XR Development Tools

Man, you ever take a stroll through Google’s latest tech doodads? I just stumbled on their new Android XR Developer Preview—second edition, if you’re keeping count. They’re throwing in some nifty updates and features. Fancy stuff like broader immersive video support, UI that adapts better, hand-tracking for ARCore in Jetpack. Sounds like tech lingo soup, but hey, it means something cool, probably.

So, at Google I/O, they chat about all these new toys in the Android XR SDK. Basically, they’re giving devs shiny new tools for building XR magic. You got those 180° and 360° video playback options now, tapping into the MV-HEVC codec—people seem to love these acronyms, huh?

Then they went on about Jetpack Compose for XR. Say what? Yeah, it’s all about making the UI play nice across different displays. Widgets like SubspaceModifier and SpatialExternalSurface—I’ve no clue what those really mean, but they sound important.

There’s this pic floating around, some official-looking schematic. Corporate art, right? Anyway, moving on.

Oh, and there’s some jazz about hand-tracking with ARCore for Jetpack XR. Imagine 26 posed joints just for flapping your hands around—crazy. Imagine what you could build with that! The dev section is buzzing with samples, benchmarks, guides, the whole shebang.

Material Design for XR is out there too. Google wants your apps to mesh with XR, just like slipping into a comfy pair of socks. Or glasses. You get me?

Now, here’s the kicker—lots of devs probably aren’t even touching official XR headsets yet. There’s stuff like Samsung Project Moohan and XREAL Project Aura headed our way. Survival kit: Android XR Emulator. It’s like your VR sandbox when you can’t play in the big leagues just yet.

Did I mention they souped up the Android XR Emulator? Now with AMD GPU support and better mojo in Android Studio. Testing and building XR apps might just get less hair-tearing. Unity is jumping on this too; their OpenXR Pre-Release 2 is comin’ in hot with performance tweaks. Dynamic Refresh Rate, SpaceWarp through Shader Graph—go wrap your head around that!

Oh, and Unity’s Mixed Reality template got some love. Realistic hand mesh occlusion—sounds like you won’t be waving ghost hands anymore. They’ve even got samples like hand tracking, face tracking, you name it.

And while Google didn’t set the XR world on fire at this year’s bash, they’re still nudging it along. Especially with their XR smart glasses—Warby Parker and Gentle Monster cooking something up. Two flavors: Ray-Ban-a-like and another with mini displays for basic tasks. Read your text, watch a vid, maybe find your way when you’re lost. Handy stuff.

Anyway, if you’re keen on getting more into the weeds, there’s a whole treasure trove of info on Android XR Developer Preview floating around. Dive in if you dare!