Plugin/Handbook/src/advanced-topics/openxr

OpenXR

The SenseGlove Unreal Engine Plugin has provided OpenXR-compatible hand tracking by implementing XR_EXT_hand_tracking since v2.1.0.

Typically a user does not need to know anything about OpenXR to use the plugin, so this section of the handbook is for advanced users who are looking for a way to directly consume the OpenXR data coming directly from either a SenseGlove device or if enabled in the plugin settings from hand-tracking.

Since the SenseGlove Unreal Engine Plugin registers itself as an OpenXRHandTracking motion controller device it becomes a hand-tracking provider for Unreal Engine, thus the OpenXR data from SenseGlove could always be retrieved from the Unreal Engine's IXTrackingSystem with one caveat. The caveat is if another OpenXR-compatible hand-tracking plugin, e.g. Epic's own OpenXRHandTracking, is enabled simultaneously it's not guaranteed that the FXRMotionControllerData retrieved from the IXTrackingSystem::GetMotionControllerData() method is coming from SenseGlove, as this method returns the first hand-tracking plugin it could find. Thus, SenseGlove provides its own implementation of GetMotionControllerData() which guarantees the retrieved FXRMotionControllerData is coming from the SenseGlove Unreal Engine Plugin; and this is the preferred way to that.

In the next sections we'll see how we can directly consume the FXRMotionControllerData to draw debug virtual hands in both Blueprint and C++.