Whenever iRacing starts a new season, a huge update that includes some new cars and tracks is released. After that, several patches/fixes get released that mainly address bug fixes. However, yesterday's 2022 Season 3 Patch 2 Hotfix 1 announced a new feature as well: support for Open XR.
What is OpenXR?
OpenXR is a Virtual Reality (VR) standard that's open and royalty-free. All the popular VR headset standards are supported like Windows Mixed Reality and Oculus. However, the headset that's going to make the best use of this new support in iRacing is the Varjo Aero. This is a high-end VR headset with an equally high-end price: $2000. Up till now, Varjo Aero users had to make do with a workaround but now they'll have native support via OpenXR.
We currently run a Windows Mixed Reality headset that can work through OpenXR. We'll test it against the SteamVR protocol and update this article with our findings.
Final thoughts
The rest of this patch is the usual bug fixes, updates to tracks, damage model fixes etc. This isn't a huge update by any means but the new OpenXR support is a welcomed addition to iRacing's already excellent support for VR.
