4 ms·

Although pretty cool - I am not convinced that the browser is the right medium for this but I am happy to be proven wrong! While the web is an amazing platform

by _pdp_ 10y ago

Although pretty cool - I am not convinced that the browser is the right medium for this but I am happy to be proven wrong! While the web is an amazing platform and I do wish it grows beyond what any app store and I think that we need to fundamentally rethink some parts of it to make it better and allow more streamlined clients to operate on top of it. Luckily WebVR is just a client API which should not be hard to mirror in streamlined clients but I do not see yet the adoption of such approach and I think that will be awesome in terms of performance and in order to make it more portable/emendable into all kinds of devices. That being said, having a VR experience provided on a web site like Amazon, Google, Facebook or Youtube could be interesting but I am not sure if the adoption will be wide and I do not think this is due to the technology itself but the fact that VR obstructs your entire view - it is immersive for sure - but you need to be comfortable to use it where you are sitting and most people are out and about and not exactly in their safe surroundings of their home. This is why AR in my opinion will have a much wider adoption.

leggomylibro 10y ago
I think it could work for lower-fidelity experiences. I could see it working if I could snap on sleeping mask-sized goggles which plug into my laptop for 360 video, simple experiences/games like a quiz show or rubiks-cube puzzles, that sort of thing. I think it could be a super cool way to deliver minor time-wasters like flash games, (what with flash dying off and everything,) especially if you could quickly pause/resume them while keeping the heavy overhead confined within a browser tab. This doesn't look quite performant enough for that, but baby steps.
wavefunction 10y ago
Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR, and given that for most people in the world their only computing device is their phone, this seems to be the fastest way to introduce VR to the widest audience possible. That's why browser-based VR also makes a lot of sense, because all those phones have browsers and writing a VR app just means targeting the widest and most mature platforms out there. A Cardboard experience won't match a mature HMD but that's alright. It allows people who wouldn't have any VR at least some rudimentary experience.
- Stanleyc23 10y ago
  >Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR for now, but what is your outlook on Google Tango[0] type devices starting to get wider adoption? It is my general assumption that both google and apple will soon ramp up production of devices with such hardware specs. [0] https://get.google.com/tango/ https://get.google.com/tango/
- ge96 10y ago
  >Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR Why? Processing? I cut out a hole for my phone's camera in my cardboard, was hoping to have the ability to "minimize" VR like minimizing a window and seeing your desktop background except it would be the camera so you could see someone without taking off your headset.
  - jononor 10y ago
    The "minimizing" VR world to show real-world is one that I want as well. With AR in general, one would want to place virtual objects onto particular real-world locations. This requires depth-vision and mapping this into a (simplified) 3d-world. For interactive use it needs to be done real-time, requiring quite a lot of compute. The single camera available on standard smartphones is not enough hardware for this. Maybe we will get stereo-cameras by standard. The megapixel race is over, the high-FPS/slowmo fight is happening now, maybe stereo/depth/3d will be next.
    - ge96 10y ago
      I'm not sure if lytro (can't quite recall the name) but the technology that captures a photo at various depths of field, if you had that for 360, and captured sound, you could travel around a spot/zoom/focus on things. I want that. I get your point about one camera versus 2. It's probably cost maybe? Why they use spinning LiDAR's versus phased array (non-spinning). Though even if it phased you'd still need something that was like 360 anyway to get around.
- skocznymroczny 10y ago
  I don't really understand the cardboard. Maybe I'm using it wrong. Does it provide any VR/3D feeling at all? Whenever I used it it only felt like a big zoom and the fact that you can move your head around, but I can just use my mouse wheel to zoom in and use my mouse to rotate around for almost the same effect.
tdb7893 10y ago
Honestly nowadays it seems like the browser is the right medium for everything. Most people I know who aren't developers or video game players seem to spend like 95% of their time on a computer in a web browser.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Next step: Browser becomes full screen and always-on. People don't know difference between OS and browser. Rich websites become icons on your new tab screen. People call them apps. Tabs become known as virtual desktops or spaces. Somebody invents an app that can show websites and calls it a browser. The cycle repeats.
  - _pdp_ 10y ago
    While browsers relay on modern OS to function the reality is that you rarely interact with the OS from user perspective - only when you want to upload a file and such. This is why the browser as a medium makes perfect sense for OS and I think this is why ChromeOS makes a lot of sense although we see it is not massively adopted - maybe not yet. But yes, everything you just said is like strange dejavu.
  - shurcooL 10y ago
    Have you already seen the on-point "The Birth & Death of JavaScript" talk by Gary Bernhardt? It points out how despite being ridiculous, there are good reasons why an approach like that has performance benefits.
    - Swizec 10y ago
      I have not but that sounds fascinating. Thanks!
    - _pdp_ 10y ago
      This idea resonates a lot with me

by _pdp_ 10y ago

leggomylibro 10y ago

I think it could work for lower-fidelity experiences. I could see it working if I could snap on sleeping mask-sized goggles which plug into my laptop for 360 video, simple experiences/games like a quiz show or rubiks-cube puzzles, that sort of thing. I think it could be a super cool way to deliver minor time-wasters like flash games, (what with flash dying off and everything,) especially if you could quickly pause/resume them while keeping the heavy overhead confined within a browser tab. This doesn't look quite performant enough for that, but baby steps.

wavefunction 10y ago

Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR, and given that for most people in the world their only computing device is their phone, this seems to be the fastest way to introduce VR to the widest audience possible. That's why browser-based VR also makes a lot of sense, because all those phones have browsers and writing a VR app just means targeting the widest and most mature platforms out there. A Cardboard experience won't match a mature HMD but that's alright. It allows people who wouldn't have any VR at least some rudimentary experience.

Stanleyc23 10y ago
>Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR for now, but what is your outlook on Google Tango[0] type devices starting to get wider adoption? It is my general assumption that both google and apple will soon ramp up production of devices with such hardware specs. [0] https://get.google.com/tango/ https://get.google.com/tango/
ge96 10y ago
>Much easier to do VR with a smartphone than AR Why? Processing? I cut out a hole for my phone's camera in my cardboard, was hoping to have the ability to "minimize" VR like minimizing a window and seeing your desktop background except it would be the camera so you could see someone without taking off your headset.
- jononor 10y ago
  The "minimizing" VR world to show real-world is one that I want as well. With AR in general, one would want to place virtual objects onto particular real-world locations. This requires depth-vision and mapping this into a (simplified) 3d-world. For interactive use it needs to be done real-time, requiring quite a lot of compute. The single camera available on standard smartphones is not enough hardware for this. Maybe we will get stereo-cameras by standard. The megapixel race is over, the high-FPS/slowmo fight is happening now, maybe stereo/depth/3d will be next.
  - ge96 10y ago
    I'm not sure if lytro (can't quite recall the name) but the technology that captures a photo at various depths of field, if you had that for 360, and captured sound, you could travel around a spot/zoom/focus on things. I want that. I get your point about one camera versus 2. It's probably cost maybe? Why they use spinning LiDAR's versus phased array (non-spinning). Though even if it phased you'd still need something that was like 360 anyway to get around.
skocznymroczny 10y ago
I don't really understand the cardboard. Maybe I'm using it wrong. Does it provide any VR/3D feeling at all? Whenever I used it it only felt like a big zoom and the fact that you can move your head around, but I can just use my mouse wheel to zoom in and use my mouse to rotate around for almost the same effect.

tdb7893 10y ago

Honestly nowadays it seems like the browser is the right medium for everything. Most people I know who aren't developers or video game players seem to spend like 95% of their time on a computer in a web browser.

Swizec 10y ago
Next step: Browser becomes full screen and always-on. People don't know difference between OS and browser. Rich websites become icons on your new tab screen. People call them apps. Tabs become known as virtual desktops or spaces. Somebody invents an app that can show websites and calls it a browser. The cycle repeats.
- _pdp_ 10y ago
  While browsers relay on modern OS to function the reality is that you rarely interact with the OS from user perspective - only when you want to upload a file and such. This is why the browser as a medium makes perfect sense for OS and I think this is why ChromeOS makes a lot of sense although we see it is not massively adopted - maybe not yet. But yes, everything you just said is like strange dejavu.
- shurcooL 10y ago
  Have you already seen the on-point "The Birth & Death of JavaScript" talk by Gary Bernhardt? It points out how despite being ridiculous, there are good reasons why an approach like that has performance benefits.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    I have not but that sounds fascinating. Thanks!
  - _pdp_ 10y ago
    This idea resonates a lot with me