Godot

Godot
Information
Type	Game engine
Industry	Video game development
Developer	Godot Foundation and community contributors
Written In	C++
Operating System	Windows, macOS, Linux
License	MIT License
Supported Devices	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, web, OpenXR headsets
Release Date	February 2014
Website	https://godotengine.org

Godot (also called Godot Engine) is a free and open-source game engine for building 2D and 3D applications. It is released under the MIT License and developed by the non-profit Godot Foundation together with a community of contributors. Since version 4.0, Godot has shipped with built-in support for OpenXR, the cross-platform standard for virtual reality and augmented reality devices, which makes it usable for VR and AR development on desktop, standalone headsets, and the web.

The engine was created by Argentine developers Juan Linietsky and Ariel Manzur, who used it internally for several years before open-sourcing it in February 2014. Godot is written in C++ and provides its own scripting language, GDScript, alongside support for C#. The latest stable release as of mid-2026 is 4.6.3, published on May 20, 2026.

Godot is one of the main game engines used for XR work, alongside the proprietary Unity and Unreal Engine. Its OpenXR support has received funding and engineering help from the Khronos Group, Meta's Reality Labs, and the services company W4 Games, which positioned it as an open-source alternative for XR developers.

History

Godot began as an in-house engine developed by Juan Linietsky and Ariel Manzur at Okam Studio, where it was used to produce work-for-hire titles. The MIT license header records copyright as held by Juan Linietsky and Ariel Manzur for the years 2007 to 2014, and by Godot Engine contributors from 2014 onward. The engine was released as open-source software in February 2014.

The engine's user base grew sharply after September 2023, when Unity Technologies announced a per-installation runtime fee for Unity. The plan, which would have charged developers retroactively per install, drove many studios to evaluate alternatives, and Road to VR reported that the controversy roughly doubled Godot's user base at the time.

Godot 4.0, released on March 1, 2023, was a large rewrite that moved rendering to the Vulkan API and promoted OpenXR into the engine core. The same release introduced the Godot XR Tools add-on for building VR interactions. Development is managed by the Godot Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds the maintainers; the latest stable branch as of mid-2026 is 4.6, first released in late January 2026, with maintenance release 4.6.3 following on May 20, 2026.

XR support

OpenXR support has been built into Godot since the 4.0 release. Because OpenXR is a vendor-neutral standard, a single Godot project can target any conformant runtime, including desktop runtimes such as SteamVR and Monado, standalone headsets, and browser-based VR through WebXR. The XR effort is led by maintainer Bastiaan Olij.

The Khronos Group has used Godot as an open-source testbed for new OpenXR extensions, validating them in a public engine before they enter the standard, and has funded a project to accelerate XR feature work in the engine.

Vendor-specific hardware features sit in a separate add-on, the Godot OpenXR Vendors plugin, maintained by the GodotVR community organization outside the engine core. The plugin wraps OpenXR extensions created by hardware vendors such as Meta, Pico, and HTC. Version 4.0.0 of the plugin, announced ahead of GodotCon Boston in July 2025, added dynamic resolution for Meta headsets and a Khronos OpenXR loader for Android, and cut the package size from about 194 MB to 23.3 MB. Later releases added full body tracking, Application SpaceWarp for Meta and Pico devices, and environment depth for mixed reality, requiring Godot 4.5 or later.

The following table lists selected XR capabilities by source.

Capability	Detail	Source
OpenXR in core	Built in since Godot 4.0 (March 2023)
WebXR	Browser VR export from a single Godot 4 project
Render models extension	Shipped in Godot 4.5; displays platform-specific controller models
Spatial Entities	Spatial anchors, plane detection, and marker tracking in Godot 4.6
OpenXR 1.1 and frame synthesis	Added in Godot 4.6 with Quad View rendering
Android XR	Vendor plugin v4.2.0 adds initial Android XR support for Godot 4.5+

Android XR

In November 2025, the services company W4 Games announced that it was working with Google's Android XR team and the Godot Foundation to extend Godot's support for Android XR, the XR platform behind devices such as the Samsung Galaxy XR. W4 Games is a professional-services company built around Godot; it is not the engine's creator. Initial Android XR support arrived through version 4.2.0 of the Godot OpenXR Vendors plugin for Godot 4.5 and newer, with the deeper, platform-specific features developed together with the Android XR team. W4 Games XR contributor David Snopek described the v4.2.0 plugin as delivering "the initial support for Android XR" while further work continued. W4 Games also provides financial support to the Godot Foundation for ongoing OpenXR development. Google's Android XR documentation states that Godot's XR system is built on OpenXR and that Android XR vendor extensions in the Vendors plugin supply the implementations needed for Android XR hardware.

Technical overview

Godot is written in C++ and runs as an editor on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Projects can be exported to desktop platforms, Android, iOS, the web, and consoles. The engine uses GDScript, a Python-like scripting language designed for it, and also supports C#; community bindings exist for other languages. Godot 4.0 introduced a Vulkan-based renderer in place of the OpenGL renderer used in the 3.x series.

For XR, the renderer choice matters because OpenXR sits close to the graphics layer; the move to Vulkan in 4.0 accompanied the promotion of OpenXR into the engine core.