Ultraleap Joins Khronos to Help Bring Advanced Hand Tracking to the OpenXR Open Standard

Posted; February 20, 2020

20th October 2020 – Ultraleap, the world leader in technologies redefining human‐machine interactions, has joined The Khronos® Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies creating advanced acceleration standards, and started participating in the OpenXR™ Working Group.

The Khronos Group created and launched OpenXR as a unifying, royalty‐free, open standard to provide high‐performance, cross‐platform access to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms and devices.

“It’s exciting to join such a great group of organisations, such as Qualcomm, Varjo and Microsoft, as a contributing member. The Khronos Group is focused on making innovation in VR and AR - increasingly known as XR - happen faster and in a more cohesive way. The OpenXR standard enables applications from diverse companies to work together more easily and reduces fragmentation in a highly complex and dynamic market. This will accelerate global market adoption and industry growth. “We have been the undisputed leaders in hand tracking and mid-air haptics for more than six years. By joining the OpenXR Working Group, we can contribute our own expertise and know-how in hand tracking, mid-air haptics and spatial computing more generally to ensure end users benefit from only the highest of standards and performance in XR.”

Steve Cliffe, CEO of Ultraleap -

“We welcome Ultraleap to the Khronos Group and the OpenXR Working Group as we do to all companies focused on the development of high quality, open standards for mobile and desktop immersive technologies. As one of the industry pioneers in hand tracking and spatial computing overall, Ultraleap’s contribution to evolving OpenXR will be invaluable.”

Brent Insko, OpenXR Working Group Chair and Lead XR Architect at Intel -

The Khronos Group is an open industry consortium of over 150 leading hardware and software companies creating advanced, royalty‐free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, vision and machine learning. Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting‐edge accelerated platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.

Ultraleap is focused on facilitating highly engaging, natural interaction between people and technology. The fast‐growth company employs over 150 people in the UK, US and Asia. It has become the first to offer the full vertical stack of software and hardware to enable immersive virtual touch controls for the automotive, advertising, industrial, immersive entertainment and enterprise sectors.

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About Ultraleap
Ultraleap is the new single brand formed after Leap Motion joined Ultrahaptics in 2019. The combination of the two leaders and a strong portfolio of research-based IP are now focused on facilitating engaging, natural, 3D (spatial) interaction between people and technology. This fast-growth company employs more than 150 people across UK, US and Asia. It has become the first to offer the full vertical stack of software and hardware to enable immersive virtual touch controls for the automotive, advertising, industrial, immersive entertainment and enterprise sectors.

About the Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is an open industry consortium of over 140 leading hardware and software companies creating advanced, royalty-free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, vision and machine learning. Khronos standards include Vulkan®, OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, OpenGL® SC, WebGL™, SPIR-V™, OpenCL™, SYCL™, OpenVX™, NNEF™, COLLADA™, OpenXR™, 3D Commerce™, and glTF™. Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge accelerated platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.