WebVR 1.0 API Proposal Introduced
Written by Kay Ewbank   
Wednesday, 09 March 2016

WebVR is an experimental Javascript API that provides browser access to Virtual Reality devices, such as Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard. Version 1.0 of the proposal includes improvements based on developer feedback.

Work on the proposal has been carried out jointly by teams from Mozilla and Google Chrome. The WebVR API is currently available in Firefox nightly builds with an Oculus Rift enabler installed, or in experimental builds of Chrome.

The main improvements to the latest version of the API are:

  • VR-specific handling of device rendering and display.

  • The ability to traverse links between WebVR pages.

  • The ability to enumerate VR inputs, including six degrees of freedom motion controllers.

A stable implementation of the 1.0 APIs is planned for the first half of the year. Experimental builds for Chrome are already available. 

 

webvr images

 

Brandon Jones of the Google Chrome group says that the new version has a renewed focus on WebGL content. He said in a blog post that:

"The idea of displaying DOM elements in VR is an attractive one, and on the surface it feels like it should work fairly naturally with existing features like 3D CSS transforms. The devil is in the details, though, and there’s a lot of subtle issues that make the jump from a 2D screen to true 3D space difficult."
 
Jones says that the developers would still like to see DOM content in VR someday, but in the interest of delivering a stable, useful API as soon as possible that has been put on hold, and the developers have focused exclusively on presenting WebGL content for WebVR 1.0 so they can support one type of content really well rather than multiple types of content poorly.
webvr

More Information

WebVR Site

Brandon Jones' Blog

Mozilla Hacks Blog

WebVR On Github

Related Articles

Hololens Invitations For Pre-Order

Successor To Cardboard Under Development

Cardboard Extends Its Reach 

The Most Exciting Thing At Google I/O - A Piece Of Cardboard 

 

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 

 

Banner

MCP For Debugging And Reverse Engineering
27/05/2025

Model Context Protocol is now taking control over Windbg and Ghidra to automate the tedious tasks that reverse engineers have to go through in their day-to-day work.


+ Full Story
Z3 Completed This Day In 1941
12/05/2025

On May 12, 1941 Konrad Zuse completed his Z3 computer, the first program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. It followed in the footsteps of the Z1 - the world’s first binary digital [ ... ]


+ Full Story
More News

 

espbook

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 09 March 2016 )