DisplayXR Runtime

An open-source OpenXR runtime for spatial displays — 3D monitors and laptops with tracked stereo and multiview lightfield display technology.

Built on Monado by Collabora, DisplayXR strips away headset-centric infrastructure (34 VR drivers, Vulkan server compositor, tracking subsystems) and replaces it with a lightweight runtime purpose-built for 3D displays: ~150 files, 3 drivers, native compositors for every graphics API.

Architecture

App (any graphics API)
        |
   OpenXR State Tracker
        |
   Core xrt interfaces
        |
   +----+-----+--------+--------+
   |    |     |        |        |
 D3D11 D3D12 Vulkan  Metal   OpenGL   ← native compositors
   |    |     |        |        |
   Display Processor (LeiaSR / sim_display)
        |
   Display

Every graphics API gets its own native compositor — no Vulkan intermediary, no interop overhead. Vendor-specific processing (interlacing, lenticular weaving) is isolated in the display processor layer.

API	Windows	macOS
D3D11	Shipping	—
D3D12	Shipping	—
Metal	—	Shipping
OpenGL	Shipping	Shipping
Vulkan	Shipping	Shipping

Quick Start

# Windows — recommended (auto-fetches vcpkg, OpenXR loader, LeiaSR SDK)
scripts\build_windows.bat all
# Outputs: _package/DisplayXRSetup-*.exe (installer) + _package/bin/

# macOS
brew install cmake ninja eigen vulkan-sdk && ./scripts/build_macos.sh

# Run without installing
XR_RUNTIME_JSON=./build/Release/openxr_displayxr-dev.json ./your_openxr_app

Pre-built installers from GitHub Releases. For the spatial-workspace experience, also install the DisplayXR Shell (separate installer, registers with the runtime via the workspace controller contract).

See Building DisplayXR for full instructions and CMake options.

Simulation Driver

No 3D display required. The sim_display driver provides a simulated tracked display with WASD + mouse eye position control:

XR_RUNTIME_JSON=./build/openxr_displayxr-dev.json ./build/test_apps/cube_handle_vk_macos/cube_handle_vk_macos

Documentation

I want to...	Start here
Build apps for 3D displays	Getting Started
Contribute to DisplayXR	Contributing Guide
Integrate my display hardware	Vendor Integration Guide
See the full docs index	Documentation Index
See the project roadmap	Roadmap

Key References

• App Classes — handle, texture, hosted, IPC
• XR_EXT_display_info — display properties and rendering mode extension
• Kooima Projection — stereo math and projection pipelines
• Separation of Concerns — layer boundaries
• displayxr-mcp — embeddable MCP server framework. End users opt in to AI-agent / voice control by installing DisplayXR MCP Tools (releases), which writes HKLM\Software\DisplayXR\Capabilities\MCP\Enabled=1; the runtime reads this at startup and spawns a per-app MCP server. DISPLAYXR_MCP=1 (or =0) is still supported as a process-local override for CI / dev. Runtime registers Phase A handle-app introspection tools (list_sessions, get_display_info, capture_frame, tail_log, …) per app process; the reference shell hosts Phase B workspace tools. Spec at displayxr-mcp/docs/mcp-spec.md.

Related Repos

Repo	Description
displayxr-shell-releases	DisplayXR Shell — spatial workspace controller (installer + bug reports)
displayxr-extensions	OpenXR extension specs and headers
displayxr-mcp	Embeddable MCP server framework + DisplayXR MCP Tools installer (end-user opt-in for agent / voice control)
displayxr-demo-gaussiansplat	3D Gaussian Splatting reference demo
displayxr-unity	Unity engine plugin (UPM package)
displayxr-unreal	Unreal Engine plugin
kooima-projection	Off-axis frustum projection math library

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See the contributing guide for workflow, code style, and CI expectations.

License

Boost Software License 1.0