Getting started with MRTK and XR SDK

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XR SDK is Unity's new XR pipeline in Unity 2019.3 and beyond. In Unity 2019, it provides an alternative to the existing XR pipeline. In Unity 2020, it will become the only XR pipeline in Unity.

Prerequisites

To get started with the Mixed Reality Toolkit, follow the provided steps to add MRTK to a project.

Add XR SDK to a Unity project

Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus, and OpenXR are supported on XR SDK.

Required in Unity

OpenXR (Preview)

Important

OpenXR in Unity is only supported on Unity 2020.2 and higher.

Currently, it also only supports x64 and ARM64 builds.

  1. Follow the Using the Mixed Reality OpenXR Plugin for Unity guide, including the steps for configuring XR Plugin Management and Optimization to install the OpenXR plug-in to your project.
  2. Ensure that the following have successfully installed:
    1. XR Plugin Management
    2. OpenXR Plugin
    3. Mixed Reality OpenXR Plugin
Note

For the initial release of MRTK and OpenXR, only the HoloLens 2 articulated hands and Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers are natively supported. Support for additional hardware will be added in upcoming releases.

Plugin management

Windows Mixed Reality

  1. Go into Unity's Package Manager and install the Windows XR Plugin package, which adds support for Windows Mixed Reality on XR SDK. This will pull down a few dependency packages as well. Ensure the following all successfully installed:
    1. XR Plugin Management
    2. Windows XR Plugin
    3. XR Legacy Input Helpers
  2. Go to Edit > Project Settings.
  3. Click on the XR Plug-in Management tab in the Project Settings window.
  4. Go to the Universal Windows Platform settings and ensure Windows Mixed Reality is checked under Plug-in Providers.
  5. Ensure that Initialize XR on Startup is checked.
  6. (Required for in-editor HoloLens Remoting, otherwise optional) Go to the Standalone settings and ensure Windows Mixed Reality is checked under Plug-in Providers. Also ensure that Initialize XR on Startup is checked.
  7. (Optional) Click on the Windows Mixed Reality tab under XR Plug-in Management and create a custom settings profile to change the defaults. If the list of settings are already there, no profile needs to be created.

Plugin management

Required in MRTK

If using OpenXR, choose "DefaultOpenXRConfigurationProfile" as the active profile or clone it to make customizations.

If using other XR runtimes in the XR Plug-in Management configuration, like Windows Mixed Reality or Oculus, choose "DefaultXRSDKConfigurationProfile" as the active profile or clone it to make customizations.

These profiles are set up with the correct systems and providers, where needed.

To migrate an existing profile to XR SDK, the following services and data providers should be updated:

Camera

From WindowsMixedReality.WindowsMixedRealityCameraSettings

Legacy camera settings

to

OpenXR Windows Mixed Reality
GenericXRSDKCameraSettings XRSDK.WindowsMixedReality.WindowsMixedRealityCameraSettings and GenericXRSDKCameraSettings

XR SDK camera settings

Input

From WindowsMixedReality.Input.WindowsMixedRealityDeviceManager

Legacy input settings

to

OpenXR Windows Mixed Reality
OpenXRDeviceManager XRSDK.WindowsMixedReality.WindowsMixedRealityDeviceManager

OpenXR:

OpenXR input settings

Windows Mixed Reality:

XR SDK input settings

Boundary

From MixedRealityBoundarySystem

Legacy boundary settings

to

OpenXR Windows Mixed Reality
XRSDKBoundarySystem XRSDKBoundarySystem

XR SDK boundary settings

Spatial awareness

From WindowsMixedReality.SpatialAwareness.WindowsMixedRealitySpatialMeshObserver

Legacy spatial awareness settings

to

OpenXR Windows Mixed Reality
In progress XRSDK.WindowsMixedReality.WindowsMixedRealitySpatialMeshObserver

XR SDK spatial awareness settings

Controller mappings

If using custom controller mapping profiles, open one of them and run the Mixed Reality Toolkit -> Utilities -> Update -> Controller Mapping Profiles menu item to ensure the new XR SDK controller types are defined.

See also