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Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

138 points by qdot76367 9y ago

forapurpose 9y ago
Does this mean Servo will exist only as a mixed reality platform, and they are abandoning the independent next-generation browser project? EDIT: Is it an organizational change - i.e., does the Servo team now report to Mixed Reality?
- larsberg 9y ago
  Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things! Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to do for mixed reality that are a little invasive and early-stage of the standards process to be experimenting with inside of existing production browser engines. With regards to a full browser, there's still a pretty big gap before Servo could stand on its own in a browser (https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining-work https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining-work ). Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices.
  - leeoniya 9y ago
    > Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. This is extremely disappointing. I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parallel. Mozilla has hundreds of millions in cashflow, right? Looks like Servo will be another exciting Mozilla project that will be prematurely dropped after a ton of work and hype-up. RIP Firefox OS, Persona, Thunderbird, etc... :(
    - woah 9y ago
      Why do they keep doing this?
    - Manishearth 9y ago
      > I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. Web compatibility is hard. Servo has a lot more potential in platforms where you don't need to support the _entire_ set of browser features -- like as an electron replacement, or a platform for something like webVR, or Android embedding (which will probably come out of the VR work as well).
      - leeoniya 9y ago
        > A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. and an impossibly far future if the Servo team is now refocused on VR, no? how likely is it that these hard problems will be solved by fewer engineer-hours? perhaps there's some external backer willing to bankroll VR and Servo is just an easy expense to curtail.
        Manishearth 9y ago
        You still need webcompat for VR stuff. Focusing on VR means that we may not be working on some kinds of webcompat things (the standard example is "IE6 table layout quirks") but there's plenty of webcompat work that needs to be done otherwise. Yes, not everyone will be working on webcompat, but this has never been the case anyway.
        leeoniya 9y ago
        > (the standard example is "IE6 table layout quirks") if a new browser in 2019 could not properly render an archived 1996 Geocities webpage at time of launch, i don't think many users would care or even notice. there are almost certainly legacy bugs in Firefox that have been open for over a decade with little activity and yet it's in production.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    >> Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. So building a fully functional browser is not higher priority than getting the half-baked browser working in a niche environment? I'm half joking here, and half serious. How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? And why does it need to be aware of the fact that it's in VR? People are still developing interaction and navigation methods in VR.
    - larsberg 9y ago
      > How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? Great question! Some of the best early work on this was done by ex-Mozilla, current-Google employee Josh Carpenter - check out: http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/ There's a lot we can do that is even beyond these early explorations to deliver new features to developers to experiment with and users to try soon via Servo, alongside GeckoView in new VR/AR-focused browser products. If you take a look at the link I provided above on remaining work and rough estimates to get things just working in Servo (and not FULLY web compat), you're looking at an effort of several years for the entire team, and that's assuming the web platform both stayed still and went ahead and finished writing all the tests and specs for everything on the web that is today neither tested nor fully spec'd. I don't see that in the cards for 2018.
      - rocky1138 9y ago
        So is this the end of the attempt to make Servo into a fully web compatible competitor to go up against/replace Gecko, et al? Was that ever the goal, really? It seemed like Servo was a "let's see if we can do it" and now it's changed into a "what's the point of putting all this effort into making one more 2D web renderer when we can be at the forefront of 3D web renderers?" Not passing judgement on anything with the above statement. Just trying to make sense of it all.
        Manishearth 9y ago
  - deltaprotocol 9y ago
    I'm really proud of what the Servo team has achieved and since I'm always looking at it from a big distance, I believe you are all able to judge this much better than me. That said, this news do not sound good to me. Again, this is from a great distance, but from here, taking a future-focused team with great respect from the community, a team with an important and invaluable mission and that has successfully delivered over years, and shifting it (or forking it) towards complete uncertainty feels like a dangerous move that reminds me of the phone OS efforts. Good riddance and may your vision be right. We need someone with Mozilla's goals looking deeper into VR so that we don't end up in the hands of the Big Corps in the near future, that is for sure, no matter if VR ends up being niche. How important that technology will be for the masses is yet to be proven and that's why I fear for the web, the battle proven real thing that faces the greatest threats from closed silos today. I don't feel it should be taken on equal terms with what is still fictional speculation. It needs full energy to make it to the future in good health. We already failed to deliver a beautiful, open and user centered internet to the future, we can't loose the open web.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    I wish everyone on the Servo project the best of luck, and hope this new project will be a success, but I can't help but agree with other commenters who see this as a move away from something that could have provided a huge fundamental advantage to Firefox/Mozilla to something less impactful. This feels like the end of the Servo project in all but name.
    - dblohm7 9y ago
      It already has provided a huge advantage via components that are already shipping (Stylo) and soon to be shipped (WebRender) in Firefox.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      I have my doubts as well, but one way to look at this announcement in a charitable light is that VR and AR are technically demanding use cases which will require the Servo team to keep a strong focus on performance. In one way, it's a good testing ground for further refining the high level of performance that Servo has already achieved, especially if the work aims to make the user experience of shifting between 2D and 3D content to be seamless (which could result in performance wins for 2D content as well). I still have a hope that Servo will be used in a next-generation Electron competitor, as that's what I thought would be the best use of Servo (in the short term). Hopefully the developers can keep this use case open by maintaining the code that allows Servo to be embedded as a component in other projects.
      - Eridrus 9y ago
        To me, the promise of Servo was that we could incrementally rewrite Firefox in Rust, evolving Rust alongside it, and solve memory corruption in a browser, making a giant leap forward for security. Servo was the credible alternative to Chrome's approach of just adding more sandboxing. I'm just disappointed.
        ZenoArrow 9y ago
        > "the promise of Servo was that we could incrementally rewrite Firefox in Rust" That's what's already happening with Project Quantum, and that project is still ongoing (as far as I'm aware). https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era-continues/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era...
88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago
Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? Or is that typical assumption that the applications will emerge only once the technology exists?
- aphextron 9y ago
  >Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? No. It's why I've lost interest in VR/AR software development for now; the real work to be done is in hardware. Even the latest HMDs are too low resolution and bulky for any kind of productivity gain. AR will be amazing once the tech is there, but the current design paradigm of "smartphone-strapped-to-face" just isn't going to cut it.
- deltron3030 9y ago
  Take regular glasses, and just make them a bit smarter, without changing their appearance much. Could be useful for displaying interface menu elements (e.g. your browser tool bar), this way you'd gain screen size and/or have more direct access to more tools at the same time, without clicking through lists and stuff.
- larsberg 9y ago
  Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it. We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in manufacturing and industrial settings, though consumer use is still less common. If you have't come across it, this HBR article is one of the best public materials: https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-reality https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-realit... VR is certainly still emerging as a platform and trying to get out of its hardcore gaming and training/corporate silos. We really believe from early user data and some more advanced markets (e.g., China) that standalone VR headsets and great cross-platform social experiences will help it reach more users. All that said: I don't personally know what the "instagram of VR" will be, though I certainly wish I did :-)
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2] The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much anything 3D has a long history of being heralded as the "early stages" of a revolution that never came. The most obvious example here is 3D video. We're at the tail end of a boom in 3D movies, a technology that now only gets applied to certain high-priced, effects-heavy blockbusters, and could well vanish. There was an even shorter 3D TV boom. [3] And of course there was the 50s boom in anaglyph (aka colored glasses) 3D. [4] But previous to that there was the ViewMaster, which was imagined to have all sorts of potential. In WW II, the US military bought 100,000 viewers because they thought the magic of 3D would be better for training soldiers. [5] And this history goes back to at least the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s, and was also expected to be revolutionary. [6] Given the many waves of hype in this era, I think we should be careful of thinking that we are on the path to some sort of destiny. Smart people have been fooled before. It's perfectly possible that this will be just another hype cycle whose main result is a bunch of dusty old hardware in the junk shops of 2050. [1] http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php [2] https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ [3] https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-falls-down-dead/ https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(1952%E2%80%931954) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(... [5] http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-u-s-military-buy-millions-of-viewmaster-reels-during-world-war-ii/ http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereosco...
vvanders 9y ago
> Coming in to 2018, we see virtual and augmented reality devices transitioning from something just for hardcore gamers and enterprises into broad consumer adoption. Every time I see phrases like this I just cringe. As someone who spent a ton of time in the gamedev/3D UI space I've yet to see anything about VR that points to be being successful in anything other than small markets. I think there are some amazing applications in architecture and gaming but I really don't see something you have to strap to you face making the mainstream in a meaningful way. I really hope this doesn't dilute Servo's effort too much because they've been doing awesome stuff lately.
- andybak 9y ago
  Forget "useful" for a moment. How does good VR make you feel? Have you not had any "wow" moments? I'm constantly surprised how blown away people are when they try (real) VR for the first time. That's what makes me optimistic about it as a medium.
  - samastur 9y ago
    I was blown away by 3D movies too at first and now don't ever try to see one.
    - andybak 9y ago
      3D movies and TV = new way to view existing content VR = an entirely new medium. Just look at the number of arts projects that use VR. I hear about something new weekly. I don't recall artists around the world getting excited about 3D movies. (Yes - VR has some similarity with games and other interactive content but cinema has some similarity with theatre and the novel has some similarity with poetry)
      - samastur 9y ago
        That may well be true, but your original claim was that we should consider how amazing the experience seems and my point was that based on historical precedence this is not a particularly strong argument. I happen to think that VR will not disappear as it clearly already is useful for certain applications. It might even be widely-used by general public some day. I am reasonably sure that day will not be in next 3-5 years.
NamPNQ 9y ago
And they still make something VR/AR on rustlang ;)
jntrnr 9y ago
There are some questions around Servo as a result of the announcement, so I just wanted to jump in and talk a bit more about what’s going on. tl;dr - Servo is Mozilla’s vehicle for web engine research, and continues to be a major source of new tech for Firefox. But we’re also adding a more direct path to product for Mixed Reality. Servo has produced lots of great browser tech. We're seeing that tech make its way into Firefox with Stylo and the Quantum release, and there's on-going work to bring even more tech into Firefox, like the WebRender work that you can try out in the latest nighlies. Servo's goal is to create the best technology for working with both current and upcoming web standards, which means collaborating with multiple product teams, from Firefox to Mixed Reality to other, future explorations. There’s still a long road to full compatibility with the existing web in all of Servo’s components, and it will take time to get there. In the meantime, though, there are emerging technologies where Mozilla believes it is vital for the open web to play a central role. One of these is Mixed Reality (which refers to both Virtual and Augmented Reality), a space that’s getting a ton of attention from all of today’s tech giants. Mixed Reality is interesting for Servo in two different respects. First, it’s a huge opportunity: it’s early days and content is brand new, so there’s no long tail of web compat to worry about; we can get products built on Servo to market relatively quickly. By putting open web tech on the cutting edge, Mozilla can help ensure that Mixed Reality doesn’t become yet another siloed technology. But second, the constraints of Mixed Reality will help us push Servo technology to the limit: we need to achieve 75 or 90 frames per second per eye to make a workable product. The research advances here will pay huge dividends back in traditional browser engines like Firefox. In short, this is a “yes, and” shift. Servo continues to be about building the best browser tech, period, for use across Mozilla’s products. The increased emphasis on Mixed Reality represents an opportunity to push that tech further, sooner. And the organizational change within Mozilla Research reflects a closer collaboration between the teams needed to make that happen.
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  I distinctly recall Servo presentation in 2012. It started: "web browsers are written in C++. It is bad for humanity." Web browsers are still written in C++. It is still bad for humanity. Emphasis on mixred reality may or may not solve that problem sooner. Sometimes the quickest way can seem roundabout. But I am skeptical.
RaleyField 9y ago
Am I the only one thinking VR for consumers won't happen for the same reason 3D television didn't happen 5(?) years ago? It's too clumsy. If you aren't gonna walk with it then it's 360 display that makes you vomit, and if you are gonna walk with it not every consumer has huge empty room where that's feasible. Most of us have couch or desk at home where we consume media, not empty warehouse. I predict whatever Mozilla thinks they are doing it will fail for the same reasons Google Glass failed spectacularly or why after years already spent on VR I don't see anybody outside koolaid-drinking techies owning one set. Mozilla has one good consumer project that can realistically be completed (browser in type-safe language) and getting the team behind it bogged down with tech that's immature and doomed to failure is unfortunate.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Servo is actually not typically viewed as realistically completable. Even Firefox, which is being developed full-pelt, is behind on web standards (like any other browser is). So, for Servo to catch up to the current state of Firefox and to then also keep pace with new web standards, it would have to be developed much quicker than Firefox is being developed. So, that would require more than double the development capacity that Mozilla currently has, as they can't drop Firefox development either. There is some points that could alleviate this: <ul> <li>A smaller project grows quicker, <li>it being written in Rust might speed up development in the long run and <li>several components are now shared between Firefox and Servo, meaning that the development and maintenance work is shared as well, <ul> but it still is far away from realistically completable. Which is also not what the project is meant to be. It's a research project. Trying out new things, creating components that can be used in Firefox, and doing experiments with VR or similar are exactly what it can be used for.
  - RaleyField 9y ago
    It's helluva more completable then any VR project Mozilla is going to try. It will be another Firefox phone project. And you don't have to repeat 20 years of Firefox to complete Firefox, a lot of it were dead-ends like XUL (themed GTK would do), a lot of it were non-essential features like Pocket and a lot of it were rewrites and mistakes that they won't have to repeat and like you said being written in Rust should speed things along. Lastly, I don't care if Servo is released standalone or if Firefox gets replaced by Servo like the ship of Theseus, all I care about is browser that is less explodable, otherwise I'll continue on Chrome.
hammerandtongs 9y ago
"""We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene.""" This is the most important missing piece, are their bugs for this? Until we have html/dom textures in vr I just don't see webvr being very successful. Just like the headset isolates you from the room, the lack of normal web content in vr/mr is very isolating.
- ericflo 9y ago
  I think they will never do this for DRM and security reasons :(
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    DRM doesn't factor into this. canvas.drawWindow() has been a thing (for addons) since 2005: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/drawWindow https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...
    - ericflo 9y ago
      That's pretty cool - so you can just render DRMed video to a texture and record that texture to get around the new DRM stuff?
      - Sylos 9y ago
        You can also set up a camera in front of your monitor and just record the whole thing. DRM has never been functional. Best it can do, is deflect the average user from just quickly sending it to his friend. But anyone with any motivation can easily get around it.
        ericflo 9y ago
        I'm honestly really glad to hear this
PudgePacket 9y ago
From the way the title is phrased it sounds like the servo team is leaving servo to work on mixed reality, quite misleading.
- noway421 9y ago
  Exactly what I thought, I'm still not sure whether it's another "Advancing our amazing bet".
zdfjkhiuj 9y ago
That's a pity. I was thinking that maybe Mozilla was getting back on track and making a no-nonsense web browser. Instead they're diverting resources to yet another gimmicky fad.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 9y ago
  > making a no-nonsense web browser I fear that ship has long sailed.
znpy 9y ago
Once again Mozilla does its best: derailing good projects in unrelated contexts for unknown (and weakly supported) reasons.
- PedroBatista 9y ago
  I would like to disagree, but I can't. Firefox OS all over again.
Vinnl 9y ago
I really like all the questions and remarks being placed here by people who have experience with the challenges of MR or are unclear about the goals of Servo, and the Mozilla people interacting here. For those of you simply dismissing whatever's happening because VR has been hyped before and it didn't pan out this time, I'd highly recommend this post: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes
perilunar 9y ago
> We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene. Microsoft's Chromeffects did this in 1998. It was pretty amazing, but alas, got canned less than a year later.
sp332 9y ago
The amount of negativity in this thread is crazy. With Microsoft pushing VR & AR right into the operating system, and headsets < $300 becoming commonplace, not to mention the iPhone X being built around the AR tech, you'd think people might get the hint that things have changed. Anyway, I was just wondering if the Servo team had seen the work Elevr had done on basic interaction design? They lost funding last year but I thought they had a ton of work done.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  "Things have changed". That's being a bit liberal. Sure, [AV]R is going to be important in the next few years, but it certainly won't be mandatory. People will still be using flat monoscopic (not stereoscopic) displays. The work Mozilla has put into Servo is clearly very useful right now. There is still a lot of work to be done on Servo, and on Rust itself. Are you really that surprised that some of us are wary of splitting that team's priorities to work on something like [AV]R?
- 13years 9y ago
  > you'd think people might get the hint that things have changed Or not. The amount of hype and investment isn't a reliable measure of future success. We've been here before. The moment when mass adoption is just around the corner. Some things are conceptually exciting, but disappointing in practice.
skyzyx 9y ago
When I first heard the announcement about Firefox OS a handful of years ago, I thought to myself “that’s a bad idea. They should stay focused instead of stretching themselves too thin.” You’re still not as fast or battery-efficient as Safari on macOS, so for me, Mozilla has more work to do on its core products before jumping onto a new tech project (like Firefox OS) that doesn’t even have a clear use in the market. You’re not Sony. You’re not Facebook. Focus on what you’re good at now, let those guys find the market and the killer apps, THEN jump into AR. You still have more work to do where you are. Tell the product people to shut up. FOCUS. Fewer features, better quality.

138 points by qdot76367 9y ago

Does this mean Servo will exist only as a mixed reality platform, and they are abandoning the independent next-generation browser project? EDIT: Is it an organizational change - i.e., does the Servo team now report to Mixed Reality?

larsberg 9y ago
Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things! Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to do for mixed reality that are a little invasive and early-stage of the standards process to be experimenting with inside of existing production browser engines. With regards to a full browser, there's still a pretty big gap before Servo could stand on its own in a browser (https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining-work https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining-work ). Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices.
- leeoniya 9y ago
  > Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. This is extremely disappointing. I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parallel. Mozilla has hundreds of millions in cashflow, right? Looks like Servo will be another exciting Mozilla project that will be prematurely dropped after a ton of work and hype-up. RIP Firefox OS, Persona, Thunderbird, etc... :(
  - woah 9y ago
    Why do they keep doing this?
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    > I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. Web compatibility is hard. Servo has a lot more potential in platforms where you don't need to support the _entire_ set of browser features -- like as an electron replacement, or a platform for something like webVR, or Android embedding (which will probably come out of the VR work as well).
    - leeoniya 9y ago
      > A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. and an impossibly far future if the Servo team is now refocused on VR, no? how likely is it that these hard problems will be solved by fewer engineer-hours? perhaps there's some external backer willing to bankroll VR and Servo is just an easy expense to curtail.
      - Manishearth 9y ago
        You still need webcompat for VR stuff. Focusing on VR means that we may not be working on some kinds of webcompat things (the standard example is "IE6 table layout quirks") but there's plenty of webcompat work that needs to be done otherwise. Yes, not everyone will be working on webcompat, but this has never been the case anyway.
        leeoniya 9y ago
        > (the standard example is "IE6 table layout quirks") if a new browser in 2019 could not properly render an archived 1996 Geocities webpage at time of launch, i don't think many users would care or even notice. there are almost certainly legacy bugs in Firefox that have been open for over a decade with little activity and yet it's in production.
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. So building a fully functional browser is not higher priority than getting the half-baked browser working in a niche environment? I'm half joking here, and half serious. How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? And why does it need to be aware of the fact that it's in VR? People are still developing interaction and navigation methods in VR.
  - larsberg 9y ago
    > How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? Great question! Some of the best early work on this was done by ex-Mozilla, current-Google employee Josh Carpenter - check out: http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/ There's a lot we can do that is even beyond these early explorations to deliver new features to developers to experiment with and users to try soon via Servo, alongside GeckoView in new VR/AR-focused browser products. If you take a look at the link I provided above on remaining work and rough estimates to get things just working in Servo (and not FULLY web compat), you're looking at an effort of several years for the entire team, and that's assuming the web platform both stayed still and went ahead and finished writing all the tests and specs for everything on the web that is today neither tested nor fully spec'd. I don't see that in the cards for 2018.
    - rocky1138 9y ago
      So is this the end of the attempt to make Servo into a fully web compatible competitor to go up against/replace Gecko, et al? Was that ever the goal, really? It seemed like Servo was a "let's see if we can do it" and now it's changed into a "what's the point of putting all this effort into making one more 2D web renderer when we can be at the forefront of 3D web renderers?" Not passing judgement on anything with the above statement. Just trying to make sense of it all.
      - Manishearth 9y ago
- deltaprotocol 9y ago
  I'm really proud of what the Servo team has achieved and since I'm always looking at it from a big distance, I believe you are all able to judge this much better than me. That said, this news do not sound good to me. Again, this is from a great distance, but from here, taking a future-focused team with great respect from the community, a team with an important and invaluable mission and that has successfully delivered over years, and shifting it (or forking it) towards complete uncertainty feels like a dangerous move that reminds me of the phone OS efforts. Good riddance and may your vision be right. We need someone with Mozilla's goals looking deeper into VR so that we don't end up in the hands of the Big Corps in the near future, that is for sure, no matter if VR ends up being niche. How important that technology will be for the masses is yet to be proven and that's why I fear for the web, the battle proven real thing that faces the greatest threats from closed silos today. I don't feel it should be taken on equal terms with what is still fictional speculation. It needs full energy to make it to the future in good health. We already failed to deliver a beautiful, open and user centered internet to the future, we can't loose the open web.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  I wish everyone on the Servo project the best of luck, and hope this new project will be a success, but I can't help but agree with other commenters who see this as a move away from something that could have provided a huge fundamental advantage to Firefox/Mozilla to something less impactful. This feels like the end of the Servo project in all but name.
  - dblohm7 9y ago
    It already has provided a huge advantage via components that are already shipping (Stylo) and soon to be shipped (WebRender) in Firefox.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    I have my doubts as well, but one way to look at this announcement in a charitable light is that VR and AR are technically demanding use cases which will require the Servo team to keep a strong focus on performance. In one way, it's a good testing ground for further refining the high level of performance that Servo has already achieved, especially if the work aims to make the user experience of shifting between 2D and 3D content to be seamless (which could result in performance wins for 2D content as well). I still have a hope that Servo will be used in a next-generation Electron competitor, as that's what I thought would be the best use of Servo (in the short term). Hopefully the developers can keep this use case open by maintaining the code that allows Servo to be embedded as a component in other projects.
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      To me, the promise of Servo was that we could incrementally rewrite Firefox in Rust, evolving Rust alongside it, and solve memory corruption in a browser, making a giant leap forward for security. Servo was the credible alternative to Chrome's approach of just adding more sandboxing. I'm just disappointed.
      - ZenoArrow 9y ago
        > "the promise of Servo was that we could incrementally rewrite Firefox in Rust" That's what's already happening with Project Quantum, and that project is still ongoing (as far as I'm aware). https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era-continues/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era...

88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago

Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? Or is that typical assumption that the applications will emerge only once the technology exists?

aphextron 9y ago
>Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? No. It's why I've lost interest in VR/AR software development for now; the real work to be done is in hardware. Even the latest HMDs are too low resolution and bulky for any kind of productivity gain. AR will be amazing once the tech is there, but the current design paradigm of "smartphone-strapped-to-face" just isn't going to cut it.
deltron3030 9y ago
Take regular glasses, and just make them a bit smarter, without changing their appearance much. Could be useful for displaying interface menu elements (e.g. your browser tool bar), this way you'd gain screen size and/or have more direct access to more tools at the same time, without clicking through lists and stuff.
larsberg 9y ago
Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it. We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in manufacturing and industrial settings, though consumer use is still less common. If you have't come across it, this HBR article is one of the best public materials: https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-reality https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-realit... VR is certainly still emerging as a platform and trying to get out of its hardcore gaming and training/corporate silos. We really believe from early user data and some more advanced markets (e.g., China) that standalone VR headsets and great cross-platform social experiences will help it reach more users. All that said: I don't personally know what the "instagram of VR" will be, though I certainly wish I did :-)
- wpietri 9y ago
  I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2] The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much anything 3D has a long history of being heralded as the "early stages" of a revolution that never came. The most obvious example here is 3D video. We're at the tail end of a boom in 3D movies, a technology that now only gets applied to certain high-priced, effects-heavy blockbusters, and could well vanish. There was an even shorter 3D TV boom. [3] And of course there was the 50s boom in anaglyph (aka colored glasses) 3D. [4] But previous to that there was the ViewMaster, which was imagined to have all sorts of potential. In WW II, the US military bought 100,000 viewers because they thought the magic of 3D would be better for training soldiers. [5] And this history goes back to at least the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s, and was also expected to be revolutionary. [6] Given the many waves of hype in this era, I think we should be careful of thinking that we are on the path to some sort of destiny. Smart people have been fooled before. It's perfectly possible that this will be just another hype cycle whose main result is a bunch of dusty old hardware in the junk shops of 2050. [1] http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php [2] https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/ [3] https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-falls-down-dead/ https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(1952%E2%80%931954) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(... [5] http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-u-s-military-buy-millions-of-viewmaster-reels-during-world-war-ii/ http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereosco...

vvanders 9y ago

> Coming in to 2018, we see virtual and augmented reality devices transitioning from something just for hardcore gamers and enterprises into broad consumer adoption. Every time I see phrases like this I just cringe. As someone who spent a ton of time in the gamedev/3D UI space I've yet to see anything about VR that points to be being successful in anything other than small markets. I think there are some amazing applications in architecture and gaming but I really don't see something you have to strap to you face making the mainstream in a meaningful way. I really hope this doesn't dilute Servo's effort too much because they've been doing awesome stuff lately.

andybak 9y ago
Forget "useful" for a moment. How does good VR make you feel? Have you not had any "wow" moments? I'm constantly surprised how blown away people are when they try (real) VR for the first time. That's what makes me optimistic about it as a medium.
- samastur 9y ago
  I was blown away by 3D movies too at first and now don't ever try to see one.
  - andybak 9y ago
    3D movies and TV = new way to view existing content VR = an entirely new medium. Just look at the number of arts projects that use VR. I hear about something new weekly. I don't recall artists around the world getting excited about 3D movies. (Yes - VR has some similarity with games and other interactive content but cinema has some similarity with theatre and the novel has some similarity with poetry)
    - samastur 9y ago
      That may well be true, but your original claim was that we should consider how amazing the experience seems and my point was that based on historical precedence this is not a particularly strong argument. I happen to think that VR will not disappear as it clearly already is useful for certain applications. It might even be widely-used by general public some day. I am reasonably sure that day will not be in next 3-5 years.

NamPNQ 9y ago

And they still make something VR/AR on rustlang ;)

jntrnr 9y ago

There are some questions around Servo as a result of the announcement, so I just wanted to jump in and talk a bit more about what’s going on. tl;dr - Servo is Mozilla’s vehicle for web engine research, and continues to be a major source of new tech for Firefox. But we’re also adding a more direct path to product for Mixed Reality. Servo has produced lots of great browser tech. We're seeing that tech make its way into Firefox with Stylo and the Quantum release, and there's on-going work to bring even more tech into Firefox, like the WebRender work that you can try out in the latest nighlies. Servo's goal is to create the best technology for working with both current and upcoming web standards, which means collaborating with multiple product teams, from Firefox to Mixed Reality to other, future explorations. There’s still a long road to full compatibility with the existing web in all of Servo’s components, and it will take time to get there. In the meantime, though, there are emerging technologies where Mozilla believes it is vital for the open web to play a central role. One of these is Mixed Reality (which refers to both Virtual and Augmented Reality), a space that’s getting a ton of attention from all of today’s tech giants. Mixed Reality is interesting for Servo in two different respects. First, it’s a huge opportunity: it’s early days and content is brand new, so there’s no long tail of web compat to worry about; we can get products built on Servo to market relatively quickly. By putting open web tech on the cutting edge, Mozilla can help ensure that Mixed Reality doesn’t become yet another siloed technology. But second, the constraints of Mixed Reality will help us push Servo technology to the limit: we need to achieve 75 or 90 frames per second per eye to make a workable product. The research advances here will pay huge dividends back in traditional browser engines like Firefox. In short, this is a “yes, and” shift. Servo continues to be about building the best browser tech, period, for use across Mozilla’s products. The increased emphasis on Mixed Reality represents an opportunity to push that tech further, sooner. And the organizational change within Mozilla Research reflects a closer collaboration between the teams needed to make that happen.

sanxiyn 9y ago
I distinctly recall Servo presentation in 2012. It started: "web browsers are written in C++. It is bad for humanity." Web browsers are still written in C++. It is still bad for humanity. Emphasis on mixred reality may or may not solve that problem sooner. Sometimes the quickest way can seem roundabout. But I am skeptical.

RaleyField 9y ago

Am I the only one thinking VR for consumers won't happen for the same reason 3D television didn't happen 5(?) years ago? It's too clumsy. If you aren't gonna walk with it then it's 360 display that makes you vomit, and if you are gonna walk with it not every consumer has huge empty room where that's feasible. Most of us have couch or desk at home where we consume media, not empty warehouse. I predict whatever Mozilla thinks they are doing it will fail for the same reasons Google Glass failed spectacularly or why after years already spent on VR I don't see anybody outside koolaid-drinking techies owning one set. Mozilla has one good consumer project that can realistically be completed (browser in type-safe language) and getting the team behind it bogged down with tech that's immature and doomed to failure is unfortunate.

Sylos 9y ago
Servo is actually not typically viewed as realistically completable. Even Firefox, which is being developed full-pelt, is behind on web standards (like any other browser is). So, for Servo to catch up to the current state of Firefox and to then also keep pace with new web standards, it would have to be developed much quicker than Firefox is being developed. So, that would require more than double the development capacity that Mozilla currently has, as they can't drop Firefox development either. There is some points that could alleviate this: <ul> <li>A smaller project grows quicker, <li>it being written in Rust might speed up development in the long run and <li>several components are now shared between Firefox and Servo, meaning that the development and maintenance work is shared as well, <ul> but it still is far away from realistically completable. Which is also not what the project is meant to be. It's a research project. Trying out new things, creating components that can be used in Firefox, and doing experiments with VR or similar are exactly what it can be used for.
- RaleyField 9y ago
  It's helluva more completable then any VR project Mozilla is going to try. It will be another Firefox phone project. And you don't have to repeat 20 years of Firefox to complete Firefox, a lot of it were dead-ends like XUL (themed GTK would do), a lot of it were non-essential features like Pocket and a lot of it were rewrites and mistakes that they won't have to repeat and like you said being written in Rust should speed things along. Lastly, I don't care if Servo is released standalone or if Firefox gets replaced by Servo like the ship of Theseus, all I care about is browser that is less explodable, otherwise I'll continue on Chrome.

hammerandtongs 9y ago

"""We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene.""" This is the most important missing piece, are their bugs for this? Until we have html/dom textures in vr I just don't see webvr being very successful. Just like the headset isolates you from the room, the lack of normal web content in vr/mr is very isolating.

ericflo 9y ago
I think they will never do this for DRM and security reasons :(
- pcwalton 9y ago
  DRM doesn't factor into this. canvas.drawWindow() has been a thing (for addons) since 2005: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/drawWindow https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...
  - ericflo 9y ago
    That's pretty cool - so you can just render DRMed video to a texture and record that texture to get around the new DRM stuff?
    - Sylos 9y ago
      You can also set up a camera in front of your monitor and just record the whole thing. DRM has never been functional. Best it can do, is deflect the average user from just quickly sending it to his friend. But anyone with any motivation can easily get around it.
      - ericflo 9y ago
        I'm honestly really glad to hear this

PudgePacket 9y ago

From the way the title is phrased it sounds like the servo team is leaving servo to work on mixed reality, quite misleading.

noway421 9y ago
Exactly what I thought, I'm still not sure whether it's another "Advancing our amazing bet".

zdfjkhiuj 9y ago

That's a pity. I was thinking that maybe Mozilla was getting back on track and making a no-nonsense web browser. Instead they're diverting resources to yet another gimmicky fad.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
digi_owl 9y ago
> making a no-nonsense web browser I fear that ship has long sailed.

znpy 9y ago

Once again Mozilla does its best: derailing good projects in unrelated contexts for unknown (and weakly supported) reasons.

PedroBatista 9y ago
I would like to disagree, but I can't. Firefox OS all over again.

Vinnl 9y ago

I really like all the questions and remarks being placed here by people who have experience with the challenges of MR or are unclear about the goals of Servo, and the Mozilla people interacting here. For those of you simply dismissing whatever's happening because VR has been hyped before and it didn't pan out this time, I'd highly recommend this post: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes

perilunar 9y ago

> We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene. Microsoft's Chromeffects did this in 1998. It was pretty amazing, but alas, got canned less than a year later.

sp332 9y ago

The amount of negativity in this thread is crazy. With Microsoft pushing VR & AR right into the operating system, and headsets < $300 becoming commonplace, not to mention the iPhone X being built around the AR tech, you'd think people might get the hint that things have changed. Anyway, I was just wondering if the Servo team had seen the work Elevr had done on basic interaction design? They lost funding last year but I thought they had a ton of work done.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
"Things have changed". That's being a bit liberal. Sure, [AV]R is going to be important in the next few years, but it certainly won't be mandatory. People will still be using flat monoscopic (not stereoscopic) displays. The work Mozilla has put into Servo is clearly very useful right now. There is still a lot of work to be done on Servo, and on Rust itself. Are you really that surprised that some of us are wary of splitting that team's priorities to work on something like [AV]R?
13years 9y ago
> you'd think people might get the hint that things have changed Or not. The amount of hype and investment isn't a reliable measure of future success. We've been here before. The moment when mass adoption is just around the corner. Some things are conceptually exciting, but disappointing in practice.

skyzyx 9y ago

When I first heard the announcement about Firefox OS a handful of years ago, I thought to myself “that’s a bad idea. They should stay focused instead of stretching themselves too thin.” You’re still not as fast or battery-efficient as Safari on macOS, so for me, Mozilla has more work to do on its core products before jumping onto a new tech project (like Firefox OS) that doesn’t even have a clear use in the market. You’re not Sony. You’re not Facebook. Focus on what you’re good at now, let those guys find the market and the killer apps, THEN jump into AR. You still have more work to do where you are. Tell the product people to shut up. FOCUS. Fewer features, better quality.