Early this year, as part of the layoffs, Microsoft laid off the entire Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) team. MRTK is an open-source project to accelerate cross-platform mixed reality development in Unity. It is built on top of Unity’s XR Management system and XR Interaction Toolkit.
Microsoft was expected to ship the MRTK3 GA build in February, but the plan was put on hold because of the layoffs. Despite the layoffs, the original MRTK team delivered the MRTK3 Preview 14 Release. Following the community feedback, Microsoft formed a new team to take forward the MRTK3 development. The new MRTK team has delivered two preview releases so far.
Today, Microsoft announced that Mixed Reality Toolkit 3 (MRTK3) will reach General Availability (GA) in Q3 this year. MRTK3 will deliver the following improvements over MRTK2.
- Faster performance:Â Developers can improve the performance of HoloLens 2 and resource-constrained mobile platforms.
- Smaller memory footprint:Â By utilizing OpenXR, developers can better reduce the memory footprint of their cross-platform apps.
- Modern user interface:Â Support for new Unity features like Unity 3D Canvas reduces the time it takes to code and launch apps into production.
Microsoft today also announced that the Azure Communication Services Calling SDK for Unity will be available in Public Preview in Q2 of this calendar year. This will allow developers to significantly reduce the time it takes to create, design, and build HoloLens 2 apps.
