UI Toolkit in VR
Overview
Intro
This site is looking into implemnenting UI Toolkit and the latest Unity UI Workflows in a VR Application based off the Meta XR SDK.
The main challenge will be transitioning all possible visual elements from UGUI to UITK while keeping the Meta Poke Interactables for the tactile VR Experience.
Aiming to work with the Meta Quest 2 as a baseline for performance. If you're brand new to UI Toolkit, to official Unity E-Book is the best resource to get started with.
Goals
The goal will be to replace the 3D and UGUI Layer with a single UITK Panel, then have the XR Interactables layered on top. The UI Panels should be able to be generated through code by Immersives, but have their design easily modifiable by creatives who can tweak values themselves, or pass it onto an immersive who can easily do it in 5 minutes.
One of the main ideas I have had is taking advantage of a "style sheet"" scriptable object class which can set the USS Style Sheet variables to quickly change the look of the project. This would also allow us to set different presets so users could customize the application however they wish. Or we could even make it fully customisable to the user who can select primary, secondary colours, font, background style etc.
Features like this are the main benefit to switching from UGUI to code generated UI.
Challenges
UITK in VR is pretty much brand new since it only became available a couple months ago so we would be among the first to develop something at a decent scale through it from what I can tell. This is a challenge since we don't have many online resources.
Unity however are really pushing it recently with a full YouTube series being launched and updated regularly as of writing this 2nd February 2026. Will be important to document progress and share knowledge as integrations goes along so everyone isn't discovering things for the first time.
Site Contents
References
Links to official Unity Documentation and Videos about UI Toolkit and Shader Graph for UI Toolkit.
Research
Pages on specific elements of the system such as Code Design Patters, UITK Shader Graph implementation, Integration with VR, and converting modern web styling to USS for use in Unity.
AI Docs
Docs generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6. Since it is new there is little resources for it to scour, but it is good at giving an overview and general ideas since the workflow is essentially trying to replicate Software UI Programming in Unity.
Good for an initial reference and overview when new to the topic but be careful with it hallucinating stuff due to the workflow still being new. These docs are pretty good for an initial look, they are just generated summaries of my discussions.