To use the Meta XR Audio SDK for Unreal, there are a few setup steps to follow. Follow the steps below to download, install, and configure the plugin for your project.

By the end of this document, you’ll be able to:

Download the Meta XR Audio SDK.

Install the Meta XR Audio SDK into your Unreal Project or Engine.

Activate the Meta XR Audio SDK in your Unreal Project.

Prerequisites

The Meta XR Audio SDK for Unreal requires the following development platform:

Windows 10/11

The plugin supports both Windows and Android (Meta Quest) as target platforms.

Download the Meta XR Audio SDK

First, you’ll need to download the Unreal plugin from the Meta XR Audio SDK for Unreal. Once downloaded, extract the .zip to a local folder on your machine.

Install Unreal Engine

The first step to get started using the Meta XR Audio SDK plugin for Unreal is to install the Unreal Engine using the Epic Games Launcher. Epic Games provides a full set of instructions on how to set up an account and navigate to the download for your desired version here⁠.

The minimum Unreal Engine version that we support for this plugin is:

Unreal Engine 5.1.1

We also test that the plugin works in the latest version of Unreal for each release. The plugin may work in versions earlier than the minimum version, but there is no support provided for that use case.

Add MetaXRAudio plugin to a project or Unreal Engine

The downloaded SDK package contains the plugin folder “MetaXRAudio”. You can either copy the plugin to “UnrealEnginePath\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace" to add it to your engine and make it available to all projects, or copy it to “YourProjectPath\Plugins” to make it available only to a specific project.

Note that you should not install the plugin for both the engine and a project as this is not recommended by Epic Games. Also note that you should not have multiple instances of different Meta audio plugins both active. For example, don’t install both the Meta XR Audio Wwise for Unreal plugin and the Meta XR Audio FMOD for Unreal plugin at the same time.

Activate MetaXRAudio plugin in a project

In your Unreal project, the first thing to do is activate the Meta XR Audio plugin so that it becomes available for usage. Navigate to Edit > Plugins and find the Meta XR Audio plugin in the list of available plugins as shown below and make sure it is checked:

Unreal plugin settings with Meta XR Audio plugin activated.

You may need to restart the editor for this change to take effect.

Repackaging for a different version of Unreal Engine

The plugin is always pre-built with the latest version of Unreal Engine. When you try to load the plugin in an earlier version of Unreal, it will recognize the difference and ask if you want to rebuild the plugin for this version. In most cases you can confirm this and it will automatically rebuild without issue. If it fails to automatically repackage the plugin for your version you can run the following script included in the Unreal Engine to repackage it:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.4\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildPlugin -plugin="C:\Downloads\MetaXRAudio\MetaXRAudio.uplugin" -package="C:\temp\MetaXRAudio"

In the above command, make sure:

The path to the RunUAT.bat file matches the version of the Unreal Engine you’d like to package for.

The -plugin argument matches the path to the MetaXRAudio.uplugin file on your directory.

The -package argument is a valid output path to place the result at.

Before repackaging, verify that the original package contains the file MetaXRAudio/Config/FilterPlugin.ini with the following content:

[FilterPlugin]
/Binaries/Win64/metaxraudio64.dll

Without this file, the repackaging process will delete the metaxraudio64.dll file and your project will open with an error that it could not find this file. Alternatively, copy MetaXRAudio/Binaries/Win64/metaxraudio64.dll directly into your repackaged plugin folder.

Unreal Project Setup

To make Unreal Engine use the Meta XR Audio plugin for spatialization in your project, edit the project settings.

Open your project in Unreal Engine.

Choose Edit > Project Settings.

Under Platforms > Windows and Platforms > Android, scroll to the Audio section at the bottom of the page. For each platform, select Meta XR Audio for both the Spatialization Plugin and Reverb Plugin. You can leave the other settings as-is.

The project is now configured to use the Meta XR Audio plugin.

Learn More

Learn more about how to use each of the features available within the Meta XR Audio SDK:

Spatialization

Acoustics

Ambisonics

Design guidelines

Design guidelines are Meta’s human interface standards and design frameworks that help you create safe, user-oriented, and retainable immersive and passthrough user experiences.