With Magic Leap and Qualcomm on the new steering committee, Microsoft declares that Mixed Reality Toolkit 3 is now a standalone entity within GitHub.

The firm provided the developer and partner community with clarification regarding the MRTK3 project’s future in a blog post.

The business stated that now that MRTK is an independent entity, it is no longer subject to the restrictions that prevented developers from introducing new endpoints and influencing product roadmaps in the past. Microsoft, however, emphasized that the change does not affect its investment in MRTK3. In actuality, the corporation stated that it sees this as an opportunity to boost program funding and establish a steering council with other significant industry players as members.

Microsoft stated that Magic Leap is a significant player in augmented reality (AR) devices, much like HoloLens, and that its developers have been leveraging MRTK UI frameworks, input systems, and other tools to enable their augmented reality Unity apps.

Seiler continued, “We intend to expand the present ecosystem and support our developer community in creating richer, more immersive experiences that transcend many platforms. Magic Leap has joined Microsoft as equal stakeholders on the MRTK3 steering group.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., which has collaborated with Microsoft on previous AR initiatives, including providing the System-on-Chip (SoC) platform utilized in HoloLens 2 – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 – is another significant industry participant that Microsoft has revealed will be a member of the steering committee.

According to Microsoft, Qualcomm Technologies added support for MRTK3 to the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform last year, allowing programmers to use MRTK UI frameworks and input systems to create volumetric experiences for Spaces-based augmented reality glasses and virtual reality (VR) headsets. The business also stated that two of the original MRTK architects are returning to the project as Qualcomm Technologies has joined the steering group.

Microsoft announced that it will continue to collaborate on new open-source features and integrations while also expanding the MRTK steering committee and giving additional updates.