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The full release of Godot 3.0 is now available, bringing VR support to the engine via a lightweight, 3DoF, ‘Cardboard-like’ solution, and OpenVR support through a GDNative-based plugin. The multiplatform Godot Engine is an open source, non-profit project available to download for free via the official site or through Steam.

As described in the news article on the Godot Engine website, Godot 3.0 is the result of over 18 months of development, bringing many changes and improvements, with a “brand new rendering engine with state-of-the-art PBR workflow for 3D, an improved assets pipeline, GDNative to load native code as plugins, C# 7.0 support, and many other features.”

VR support originally appeared with the introduction of an ‘ARVR Server architecture’ in the October 2017 Alpha 2 release, which allows various AR and VR platforms to communicate with the engine. Lead developer Juan Linietsky describes the GDNative ARVR framework as “tightly knit,” allowing support for other VR platforms to be developed “independently of the core game engine.”

Further information about the team’s plans for AR and VR support can be found in an earlier post by programmer Bastiaan Olij, which details the “Native Mobile” interface for lightweight mobile VR apps which just require headset orientation and lens distortion, and the full compatibility with SteamVR headsets via their GDNative OpenVR implementation.

An “experimental” GDNative module for OpenHMD is also available, the open source project that enables cross-platform support for several headsets, including PSVR. There are further plans to bring Gear VR and Daydream support in the future. AR is now planned for the 3.1 release; support for ARKit has been in progress for several months via Olij’s ARKit branch on GitHub.

Olij recently posted the video above demonstrating how easy it is to enable OpenVR in a project now that the module has become an official asset in the library, and a few users, including tutorial makers Game From Scratch are reporting success when using a Windows Mixed Reality headset running SteamVR.