Skip to main content
New Participant
January 3, 2026
Question

Meta XR Simulator keeps requiring Windows App Runtime 1.5+ even though newer versions are installed

  • January 3, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 462 views

I’m looking for help regarding an issue with Meta XR Simulator on Windows 11.

I’ve installed Meta XR Simulator (v83), but it continuously shows an error saying “Windows App Runtime 1.5 or higher is required”, even though Windows App Runtime versions 1.1 through 1.8 are already installed and working on my system.

 Meta XR Simulator seems unable to detect the expected 1.5 package structure or registry/runtime signals.

If anyone has encountered this issue or found a workaround (other than downgrading to v82), I’d really appreciate your insights. Thanks in advance.

5 replies

New Participant
January 10, 2026

Same for me.

testing to reinstall runtime 1.5 or newer then reeboot and allway same error message.

Also, meta  open xr v83 sdk are hang up unity on running player !!

windows 11 with unity 6.0, 6.2 or 6.3

New Participant
February 20, 2026

same problem here.   

it works on diff computer.

reinstall XR Sim, windows app runtime x64 x86  

restarted many time, still a problem, not fixed

New Participant
April 7, 2026

I had the same issue and was able to narrow it down a bit. In my case, Windows App Runtime 1.5 was already installed, so the problem was not that the OS was missing the runtime itself. The actual issue seemed to be that Meta XR Simulator’s own WinAppRuntime dependency setup was incomplete or broken. After checking the event log, `MetaXRSimulator.exe` was crashing in `Microsoft.WindowsAppRuntime.Bootstrap.dll`, which points to a simulator-side runtime registration problem rather than a normal Windows installation problem.

 

What fixed it for me was running the bundled runtime installer that comes with the simulator. In my install, it was located at `D:\MetaXR\WindowsAppRuntime\install.bat`. Running that script reinstalls the WinAppRuntime 1.5 packages that the simulator expects. On my machine, some packages were skipped because newer versions were already installed, but one missing dependency package was installed successfully, and after that `MetaXRSimulator.exe` started normally. So if anyone has the same error even though WinAppRuntime 1.5+ is already installed, I would suggest checking the simulator install folder and running its `WindowsAppRuntime\install.bat` script first.

New Participant
April 18, 2026

I tried running this install.bat file but it didn't change anything. However, I decided to try manually clicking on the .msix files to see what would happen and one of them wasn't installed. Once that happened, it worked. I believe it was the DDLM one. Hope this helps someone. 

 

New Participant
July 28, 2026

This worked saved me time thx.