Extended Reality (XR) holds immense promise to transform how we interact with the digital world, yet widespread daily adoption remains a significant challenge. One of the core hurdles is the lack of “killer applications.” A killer app is an experience so compelling and valuable that it drives users to regularly engage with XR devices, much like web browsers or social media did for past computing platforms. Many existing XR applications offer novelty but lack the depth and utility required for sustained engagement.
Developing sophisticated XR applications, particularly those involving spatial features and AI integration, is inherently more complex than building traditional text-based agents, limiting the potential pool of creators. These applications often require calling upon multiple systems and types of hardware like cameras and sensors, integrating with existing enterprise data, AI, security, and software systems, and stitching together components like AI models, machine vision, connectivity features, web reports, mobile apps, voice agents, spatial understanding, and IoT features. To overcome this complexity and expand the pool of developers, the tools available must make the creation of complex, high-fidelity, and integrated XR experiences more accessible.
This is where platforms like Umajin come into play. Umajin is an application development platform specifically designed for AI-enabled and spatial front-line applications. Umajin provides low-code tools and efficient integration of both enterprise systems and the latest AI models to develop AI/Spatial applications, aiming to simplify the process and attract a wider range of creators.
Lowering the Barrier to Entry and Expanding the Developer Pool
Umajin incorporates a low-code editor combined with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface and a Chat style interface. The low-code approach and visual tools can significantly accelerate development time and reduce reliance on extensive coding, while still supporting the need for engineering teams to align with corporate requirements and manage releases.
Umajin’s editor runs on Windows and MacOS, with UmajinXR extending support to HorizonOS and Android XR for editing. The platform provides a modular architecture designed to support new technologies as building blocks, along with extensibility options including Javascript components, native libraries (DLLs, dylibs, shared objects), and Python scripting. Developers can incorporate custom functionality or integrate with existing systems. The platform includes integrated tools for client and server development, design, coding, debugging, testing, task management, feedback, version management, and deployment. Umajin’s integrated platform creation process more accessible, enabling developers who might not have deep programming expertise in legacy game engines to build sophisticated applications.
Enabling the Creation of “Killer Apps” with Umajin
- AI-Powered Assistants and Contextual Overlays: Umajin is designed for AI-enabled applications and supports integrating AI models. It handles orchestrating and optimizing workload deployment across local, edge, and cloud infrastructure, including AWS and Azure. The platform supports spatial sensing technologies like ceiling-mounted cameras for object/person tracking, RF scanning for location data and photogrammetry. By integrating these spatial and AI capabilities, Umajin empowers developers to build applications that can perceive and understand the user’s environment, enabling the creation of hyper-personalized, context-aware assistants that can provide information overlays. The potential for these applications to be persistent and offer “all-day help” makes them strong candidates for killer apps.
- Transformative Productivity and Collaborative Workspaces (Enterprise XR): A key aspect of the Enterprise XR is the use of digital twins and integrating XR with existing enterprise systems. Umajin supports 3D digital twins and integrates with and extends existing enterprise data, AI, security, and software systems. It provides a framework for rapidly stitching together native and third-party building blocks required for spatial front-line solutions. The server layer provides a documented and extensible API layer for enterprises, supporting a “federated” data model from existing systems and secure connection to internal IoT, enterprise, and external SaaS services. The editor supports multi-user capabilities and collaborative editing across multiple locations, with live editing synchronized across the network layer. This focus on enterprise integration, digital twins, spatial data, and collaboration tools makes Umajin particularly well-suited for building the specialized, high-value productivity applications needed in manufacturing, engineering, and other industries.
- High-Fidelity Training and Simulation Environments: XR training applications require realistic environments, accurate simulations, and integration of various data types. Umajin’s platform has a native 3D rendering engine and supports importing a wide range of 3D formats. Its spatial capabilities include rendering large photoreal environments mixed with polygonal CAD data using photogrammetry-based optimizers, high-resolution optical tracking with millimeter accuracy, as well as incorporating advanced imaging like microscopy for detailed analysis. These features provide the technical foundation necessary for creating realistic and high-fidelity simulation environments required for effective training in critical professions.
- Rich, Interactive, and Social Entertainment 3D Ecosystems: Umajin is optimized for enterprise but its multi-user capabilities and ability to deliver 3D scene interaction events triggered by look, walk, touch, and voice provide building blocks for social and interactive experiences. Features like co-spacing for tracking multiple users and props enhance the potential for shared virtual spaces. The extensibility via Javascript and native code allows developers to build complex gameplay loops and integrate external services for dynamic content and economies.
- Addressing Development Speed and Iteration: Developing compelling XR experiences often requires significant iteration based on user feedback. Umajin’s patented mirroring architecture runs the application engine on both the editor and endpoint devices, with code mirrored between them. This allows development sprints to be accomplished in hours, not days or weeks. Faster iteration cycles allow developers to more quickly refine their applications and test for user stickiness, increasing the chances of landing on a successful formula.
The quest for XR “killer apps” is fundamentally a search for sustainable engagement models, requiring applications that move beyond novelty to offer indispensable value. Achieving this requires not only advancements in hardware and user experience but also a significant increase in the volume and quality of compelling XR content.
Umajin significantly broadens access to XR development, empowering a wider range of creators beyond traditional experts. Its modular architecture and robust integration capabilities enable developers to seamlessly combine AI, spatial data, enterprise systems, and hardware-level functionality, components critical to building the next generation of immersive, high-utility XR experiences.
The true “killer app” for XR may not emerge as a single dominant application, but rather through the convergence of diverse, highly engaging use cases, enabled by a robust platform that empowers creators.
By simplifying the development of complex, integrated experiences that combine spatial data, AI, and real-time connectivity, Umajin lowers the barrier to entry for developers and enterprises alike. This approach not only accelerates innovation but also increases the likelihood that one or more of these emergent applications will evolve into the “sticky,” high-value experiences necessary to push XR into the mainstream of computing.
UPDATE: Augmented World Expo 2025
The AWEXR event held in Long Beach this year captured what many in the industry see as a pivotal moment for consumer AR. This is the addition of vision language models to simple smart glasses like the successful Meta Ray-Ban’s and the new Google “Android XR Glasses“ just announced at Google IO and shown at AWEXR.
This renewed confidence from Meta and Google is important, particularly after Microsoft and Apple have both struggled to make commercial traction with their prior offerings.
This ongoing investment from Meta and Google provides a fairly generic smartphone AI extension device for consumers is important as it will drive the investment and device capability required for enterprise applications which Umajin can help create.
At the AWEXR show Umajin featured a native runtime and apps running directly on the only current shipping 6DOF AR glasses featured at the show, the Snapdragon powered MiRZA by NTT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONQmC9EmeQk. Specifically previous customers of the Magic Leap or Microsoft Hololens are looking for new hardware – and to have their applications re-imagined.