Welcome to Pluto’s Multi App Integration Toolbox!

About Pluto

Pluto is a VR telepresence platform that allows you to communicate as if you’re in person.You can grab it for free from SteamVR. Using a variety of underlying technologies, Pluto grants you the ability to deploy and use multiple XR apps simultaneously in a networked, collaborative, platform-agnostic environment. Pluto isn’t an “app” - it is an overlay layer that can work alongside any other XR app. Pluto’s goal is to facilitate your ability to communicate and attain full telepresence in XR, rather than being yet another distinct “social app” with a closed, limited ecosystem.

Pluto’s multi app capabilities aspire towards seamless integration with your XR experience, whether you’re in Virtual Reality or in the real world with Augmented Reality. Your hardware manufacturer shouldn’t matter. Your software ecosystem shouldn’t matter. The future we are helping build is open, collaborative, and approachable across the entire XR spectrum.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join this conversation and take part in building it with us. If you are interested in building the future of XR multi apps, drop us a line - we want to hear from you!

Multi Apps

We are passionate about helping XR move from “the DOS era” (single app at a time) into the Windows Era (multiple apps, or tabs, and a multitasking-oriented User Experience in XR). To achieve that goal we utilize an array of stacks and platforms, all aimed at the same aspirational end: enable the creation and usage of interconnected, universal multi apps, using any platform, in any reality (AR/VR/XR).

As a multi app developer, plan for your users to have a shared experience in the same room, whether that room is virtual or in the real world (via augmented reality). We believe multi apps don’t care which reality they’re in!

Our integrations currently enable you to build multi apps using WebXR and Aardvark, and in the future you’ll also be able to utilize Unreal Engine and Unity via OpenXR as well. Pluto provides you with a shared coordinate frame and app signaling, so that regardless of your development platform of choice, you are given a shared origin and basic networking out of the box. The provided shared origin is currently identical to SteamVR’s coordinate system, but in the future, we will provide you with OpenXR Spatial Anchors to base your experiences around.

As we iterate, prototype and prepare for this exciting future we invite you to test the waters with us - a new way of thinking, working and playing in XR. We are looking for builders, dreamers, forward-thinking folks in the XR space who share our vision and are eager to build the future of multiple applications that work alongside each other across any “reality”.

This Guide

The MAIT aims to give you a running start in learning how to use, deploy and build multi apps. There’s a lot to cover! Here are some useful starting points:

• Make sure you have the prerequisites to use pluto and multi apps

• Familiarize yourself with our two current multi app development pathways - WebXR and Aardvark. They are different ways of creating multi apps, both fully compatible with Pluto. It is well worth your time to get the 10,000 feet view of both pathways before choosing either.

• Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the basics, hop on over to our tutorials for step-by-step directions on how to get started in your multi app journey!

• Finally, check out our XR Design and Accessibility Guide for tips on best design practices for XR development.