Microsoft is bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets

At Build, Microsoft has just announced “Windows Volumetric Apps on Meta Quest,” a way to “extend Windows apps into 3D space.”

Details are slim, but the company showed off a digital exploded 3D view of an Xbox controller from the perspective of a Meta Quest 3 headset, a digital object you could manipulate with your hands — and says it took its software partner Creo a single day to bring that interactive visualization to Quest.

Microsoft says devs can sign up for the developer preview today, which’ll give you access to an unnamed “volumetric API.” The form you’ll fill out makes this sound like early days:

Microsoft is looking for developers that produce or provide plug-ins for 3D Windows desktop applications or customers that work with 3D applications on Windows desktop applications who are interested in extending those applications into 3D content with mixed reality.