Viro is going Open Source!
For the past four years Viro Media has been building the Viro platform, enabling AR and VR development for the web and mobile community. We’ve been truly awed by both the industry uptake and the diversity of the applications built on the platform. Over 20,000 developers have registered for the platform and hundreds of applications have been published using Viro.
At the same time, as the AR space has continued to expand, we’ve realized we can’t do this on our own. New phones, new headsets, and new features — depth mapping, body tracking, occlusion, and more — are coming online at an increasingly fast pace. To ensure the Viro platform continues to capture these developments, we’ve decided to turn it over to the community and open source the platform in its entirety.
We’ve gone with the MIT license to enable unrestricted use. At Viro, we’ll be putting in place a system to receive and manage pull requests, and will be periodically packaging releases. Additionally, each repository contains instructions to build from source. As the code is now open, Viro will no longer be providing directed support, but the community can continue to ask and answer questions on the viroreact issues and virocore issues forums.
The latest releases of Viro React (2.17.0) and Viro Core (1.17.0) are built off the new open-source codebase. API keys are no longer required for projects using these new releases.
The code can be found in two repositories:
1. The virocore repository contains the C++ cross-platform code for the engine and the Java binding that comprises ViroCore. This is all you need if you want to build ViroCore or directly use the C++ engine.
2. The viro repository contains the declarative framework that binds React to the engine. This is built on top of virocore, and you’ll need it if you want to add or modify any React Viro components.
Finally, note that the API key is still required for any existing projects that use ViroReact 2.16.0 or earlier or ViroCore 1.16.0 or earlier. We recommend moving off these legacy releases as soon as possible.
Thank you for your interest in Viro!
