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I hadn't looked into this for a while, but the idea of a browser backed by standards (webvr) and open source (A-frame) is REALLY exciting. I don't want to get o

I hadn't looked into this for a while, but the idea of a browser backed by standards (webvr) and open source (A-frame) is REALLY exciting. I don't want to get overly enthusiastic, but this feels geo-cities-ish. I love the idea of hand-crafted VR "websites", mostly because it forces the "hand-crafted" (literally, I suppose) part, which leads to the wonderful diversity that made geocities fun.

ngokevin 8y ago
Definitely! The next coming of the Web, VR and AR based, will have history repeat itself with Netscape, Yahoo, Geocities, etc. We created A-Frame to kick it off, but really need a browser to make everything easy to consume. Current browsers are too tied down by 2D and legacy and giant codebases, so we're trying to create something unencumbered and really tailored for VR. We're shipping features such as tailoring Supercraft for A-Frame development, being able to explore and navigate worlds, and dragging objects into your inventory for later use.
mncharity 8y ago
> I don't want to get overly enthusiastic Ok, we can help with that. :) Windows only. VR in general is still Windows-centric, followed by Android, and bit of Mac. The WebVR spec, even for W3C, was... notable. Example: to get new data, pass an immutable object to the api... which then updates it. But perhaps WebXR is now better? Very not "Just Works" - sensitive to hardware and firmware, and still crashy. A community that's better at posting "yay! it works!", than at describing just what definitions of "it" and "works" were needed for that to be sort of true, and at clearly characterizing state of play. Remember Angular 1? How its PR was full of red flags, "you'd be nuts to invest in this now rather than waiting" red flags? And that the authors didn't realize what they were waving, was yet another big red flag? A-Frame, at least early A-Frame, reminded me a lot of that. VR/AR will be awesome. But it's still rather a mess. And there's a line of bodies of people who burned time struggling with ephemeral problems. There are many explorable opportunities, including ARKit. But it seems we've a ways to go before something like a VR geocites becomes possible. Though skimming WebVR outreach might leave that non-obvious. On a more upbeat note, with most everyone focusing on "immersive" video games, there isn't yet much awareness of how bizarrely psychedelic non-novice/expert UIs in VR can be. Imagine stumbling into someone else's customized environment - sort of like dvorak "huh?", plus vi macros "what did I touch?! what did it do?!", plus blender "what? where? how?", plus geocites "bling! shazam! awesome." :)
- ngokevin 8y ago
  As one of the creators of A-Frame (and Supercraft above), and there with WebVR near the beginning. I agree, it's still a mess, early, and people love to hype and shout how awesome things are with cool images, GIFs, and videos, when the reality is it's still a ways away Honestly, I've been using A-Frame all day for the last couple years, and really enjoy its development process. And have developed applications like Supercraft that I think have some value. I do need to make it easier with documentation and stuff. But going to spend the next few years making A-Frame and WebVR worthy for developers and users. Not even to mention the mess with standards around the lower level APIs and the WebVR/XR specs themselves :) It'll get there though.
  - mncharity 8y ago
    > A-Frame [...] really enjoy its development process [...] Supercraft Nifty. If I update my Web?R-like browser-as-compositor stack for linux, that's an incentive to push through to A-Frame compatibility. Thanks.

ngokevin 8y ago

Definitely! The next coming of the Web, VR and AR based, will have history repeat itself with Netscape, Yahoo, Geocities, etc. We created A-Frame to kick it off, but really need a browser to make everything easy to consume. Current browsers are too tied down by 2D and legacy and giant codebases, so we're trying to create something unencumbered and really tailored for VR. We're shipping features such as tailoring Supercraft for A-Frame development, being able to explore and navigate worlds, and dragging objects into your inventory for later use.

mncharity 8y ago

> I don't want to get overly enthusiastic Ok, we can help with that. :) Windows only. VR in general is still Windows-centric, followed by Android, and bit of Mac. The WebVR spec, even for W3C, was... notable. Example: to get new data, pass an immutable object to the api... which then updates it. But perhaps WebXR is now better? Very not "Just Works" - sensitive to hardware and firmware, and still crashy. A community that's better at posting "yay! it works!", than at describing just what definitions of "it" and "works" were needed for that to be sort of true, and at clearly characterizing state of play. Remember Angular 1? How its PR was full of red flags, "you'd be nuts to invest in this now rather than waiting" red flags? And that the authors didn't realize what they were waving, was yet another big red flag? A-Frame, at least early A-Frame, reminded me a lot of that. VR/AR will be awesome. But it's still rather a mess. And there's a line of bodies of people who burned time struggling with ephemeral problems. There are many explorable opportunities, including ARKit. But it seems we've a ways to go before something like a VR geocites becomes possible. Though skimming WebVR outreach might leave that non-obvious. On a more upbeat note, with most everyone focusing on "immersive" video games, there isn't yet much awareness of how bizarrely psychedelic non-novice/expert UIs in VR can be. Imagine stumbling into someone else's customized environment - sort of like dvorak "huh?", plus vi macros "what did I touch?! what did it do?!", plus blender "what? where? how?", plus geocites "bling! shazam! awesome." :)

ngokevin 8y ago
As one of the creators of A-Frame (and Supercraft above), and there with WebVR near the beginning. I agree, it's still a mess, early, and people love to hype and shout how awesome things are with cool images, GIFs, and videos, when the reality is it's still a ways away Honestly, I've been using A-Frame all day for the last couple years, and really enjoy its development process. And have developed applications like Supercraft that I think have some value. I do need to make it easier with documentation and stuff. But going to spend the next few years making A-Frame and WebVR worthy for developers and users. Not even to mention the mess with standards around the lower level APIs and the WebVR/XR specs themselves :) It'll get there though.
- mncharity 8y ago
  > A-Frame [...] really enjoy its development process [...] Supercraft Nifty. If I update my Web?R-like browser-as-compositor stack for linux, that's an incentive to push through to A-Frame compatibility. Thanks.