Mozilla has been working for some time on JavaScript APIs that will allow users to create and share virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects on the Open Web.
Last year Firefox desktop support for the WebVR 1.1 API was officially launched. This design of the API enabled early users like WITHIN to distribute 3D content on the web that worked great on a variety of devices ranging from smartphones and cardboard viewers to full-featured immersive VR headsets.
The growing Importance of WebVR.
WebVR has contributed significantly to the acceptance of VR, allowing more people to experience 3D content without expensive headsets. It has also been a huge time-saver for content creators who need to test and verify that their work works well on any display platform. A more robust API for working with 3D content can reach a wider audience and it reduces the work of rework creators to enable a variety of devices to deliver great way experiences.
Mozilla is strongly committed to bringing together people from across the industry to develop a standard method for displaying 3D content in browsers. This work has created great opportunities for designers and programmers to share web-based VR experiences with a growing number of users. In addition, with WebVR support in browsers, Firefox has begun to free VR and AR content from silos and headset storage and make it accessible on the open web.
The expectations of MR.
Mixed Reality (MR) will be a powerful platform that brings highly interesting and emotionally appealing, immersive content to the web. Mozilla aims to make every other creative medium universally accessible so that curious visitors can experience the next generation of digital media without having to pay high prices for a high-end viewer.
Today, the industry is taking another step toward that goal. Mozilla is committed to expanding the number of platforms and devices that can display VR and AR content. For example, the camera on most smartphones can be used to overlay information on physical reality – if it has a set of instructions on how to do so.
The experiments will continue with a new JavaScript API called WebXR Device API. Mozilla expects that this specification will replace WebVR in time and provide users with a better user experience than the current WebVR.
New features in WebXR?
The new WebXR device API differs from WebVR by 2 new targets:
- Support of a greater variety of user inputs such as speech and gestures, which give users options for navigation and interaction in virtual spaces.
- To provide a technical foundation for developing AR experiences, authors can integrate real media with contextual overlays that enhance the user experience.
Details about the WebXR device API can be found in the Immersive Web Community Group. It is expected that many talented people who have worked on WebVR will also work on the WebXR Device API, along with new contributors such as Magic Leap.
AR on the Web.
AR and VR offer a very different immersion than traditional content. Some museums offer AR experiences to add depth and context to exhibitions. Other projects include educational content, from geology lessons to street fighting in war-torn Syria.
What can AR do on the web? There are already examples that demonstrate powerful use cases. For example, users can test in advance what the sofa in their living room will look like. AR can make online shopping a more sensual experience, allowing you to test new products in your home in a very realistic way. It’s a great addition to online shopping, especially as companies start to offer online visualizations of physical products.
Mozilla has defined some important principles that will enable the use of next generation media in the interest of users.
- The privacy of users should be protected. You should not have to provide an art store with pictures of your living room to see what a poster on your wall would look like.
- AR and VR should be made available to a wide audience. Barriers to using the technology, such as an older PC, should be removed.
- Enable developers to create content that works on all devices so that users can access mixed reality experiences with the device they own or want to use.
- VR and AR content should be able to be created by anyone, not just major studios and well-known brands.
The WebXR community is working on draft specifications that address some of the limitations of today’s wireless devices. For example, creating a skybox setting that lets you change the background image of a website. They’re also working on a way to showcase the world-sensing capabilities of earlier AR platforms on the Internet, so developers can determine where surfaces are located without having to run complex computer vision code on a battery-operated device.
It’s a huge step forward that Firefox now supports WebVR, allowing people to use current technologies while continuing to implement the next generation specification. Work has begun to add WebXR support in Firefox. An early implementation will be available in Firefox Nightly in the coming months so that developers and early adopters can use it.
Some parts of the WebXR specification are still under development. Rather than wait for a final version of the specification, Mozilla will continue with the currently available technology and adapt to any technical changes as they occur. The roadmap for the upcoming Firefox reality browser will be similar to the Firefox desktop version, with initial support for immersive browsing with WebVR and WebXR support.
Over time, Mozilla plans to support WebXR wherever WebVR is currently supported, including Windows, Linux, macOS and Android/GeckoView platforms. Mozilla will continue to support WebVR until most popular Web sites and search engines complete the transition to WebXR.
Timely AR research.
If you can’t wait to experiment with AR a little bit, you can let off steam here. With Mozilla’s WebXR Viewer for iOS, you can take a look into the future right on your iPhone or iPad. This app is an experiment based on a proposal for a preliminary API that was created last year. It is currently being prepared to use the WebXR Device API.
We developed this app to experiment with AR and find out how easy it was to get it running on iOS with Apple’s ARKit. If you’d like to see the code for the iOS app, you can do so on GitHub. For Android users, Google has a similar experiment, which is about early support for the immersive web.
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