Godot Engine set to get better VR support with a new hire thanks to Facebook

Godot Engine, the free and open source game engine for 2D and 3D games is getting a nice VR boost - thanks to Facebook Reality Labs. We can expect great things from this by the sounds of it.

Admittedly, anything with Facebook attached ends up raising a few eyebrows over here but we are talking about open source and the work will benefit everyone. Writing in a blog post on the Godot website, Project Manager Rémi Verschelde mentioned that Facebook has given the team a grant which has enabled them to hire developer Bastiaan Olij, who will be working on Godot full time as of February 2021.

The work will involve lots of exciting areas like: hooking up OpenXR support for both desktop and mobile which has wide industry support now from the likes of Microsoft / Valve / Oculus, upgrading the Godot input system to support VR specific actions, upgrade their XR plugin system for the upcoming Vulkan renderer in Godot 4.0, optimizations and so on. All big areas to see improvements for Godot and VR.

Hopefully this means once it's out (which is a while away of course), we might see even more developers opt for using Godot Engine. If you're a VR fan, this must be quite exciting news!