14 ms·

Firefox Reality Now Available

301 points by TD-Linux 8y ago

51lver 8y ago
Awesome! I have all the parts in the bins, and now I have a reason to build a VR rig! But uh... I don't see linux on the compatibility lists, and I'm not using my work mac for this, and my gaming windows computers are too old (XP), and with lineageos on my phone without gapps... I'm not buying a bunch of proprietary hardware to play with a new open technology so geez I guess I can't play with it at all. Bummer.
- nullpunkt 8y ago
  nerrrrrdddddddd
- dmarcos 8y ago
  Browser vendors don’t control drivers or hardware support on the different OSs. VR is pretty much a Windows game today with limited and experimental Vive support on OSX and Linux. I’m sure that Mozilla in particular is eager to support linux.
  - coffeeaddicted 8y ago
    Oculus GO is an Android system. No Windows involved. Unfortunately it has replaced the operating system with a shopping mall. You want that free Firefox download? Log-in to Facebook first. Every apk has to go over the shop, no sideloading. Which is a shame - would be a nice system if it only were more open.
  - jhasse 8y ago
    > I’m sure that Mozilla in particular is eager to support linux. Why would you think that? Firefox treats its Linux version as a second-class citizen (e.g. no hardware acceleration).
adamrezich 8y ago
Not seeing it in the Viveport store myself...
- larsberg 8y ago
  Sorry - Firefox Reality is only currently available Viveport Mobile for all in one / standalone devices.
inawarminister 8y ago
Hmm, if only PSVR on PC is properly supported... Still, this is a nice project! But I remember some kind of virtual reality webpage a year back or so, or was it just custom made by some 4chan users back then?
daniel_iversen 8y ago
Doesn’t look that great in the screenshots to be honest - would be nice if it’s not just a gimmick because “we can” but some new paradigm of more effectively and immersive Ly consume the web... I mean - the kind of distraction free “reader mode” that you do in Safari, imagine if you had that in VR and then a 3D way to navigate between web docs/pages based on the links on the current page and smart topics - a bit like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu[1] project from the 60s or whenever - the real vision behind hypertext! EDIT: [1]: Bit is history on Xanadu https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ - and there’s a video of it somewhere and you can/could even download a real demo of it on floppy disk I seem to recall
- dgzl 8y ago
  > would be nice if it's not just a gimmick I mean, this is the future, right?
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Don't you mean was the future? I have no idea what the current future is, all I know is that is doesn't include 3D TV sets and tablet computers replacing PCs (apparently, the PC can decline all on its own)
    - dgzl 8y ago
      If I were to guess, I imagine room-sized VR is the next step.
tokyodude 8y ago
FYI, a similar feature has been available for months in Chrome on Android under a flag. I don't remember which ones. Maybe chrome://flags/#vr-browsing-native-android-ui and chrome://flags/#vr-browsing-tab-view basically once enabled Chrome will show up as an app in the Daydream app launcher in VR I've only used it on Daydream but it's nice to be able to search in VR, use a virtual keyboard, and also run WebVR pages all without leaving VR.
zwerdlds 8y ago
Does anyone know if there's integration with WebGL?
- TD-Linux 8y ago
  Yeah there is, if you go to some of the sites on the home page there's an "enter VR" button, where the site does the equivalent of fullscreen for VR (it enters VR mode and it's much like a VR app).
nobody271 8y ago
The main problem with web browsing in VR is it's way too low resolution to read text and you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. But I guess, if you want to browse the web in VR you might as well do it in Firefox.
- azernik 8y ago
  > you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. Learn to touch type! (Though even then, you're stuck with the problem of finding your keyboard.)
  - RototRobot 8y ago
    Logitech was working on a keyboard with a steamvr tracking puck https://uploadvr.com/vr-keyboard-logitech-vive-tacker/ https://uploadvr.com/vr-keyboard-logitech-vive-tacker/
    - ss2003 8y ago
      That announcement was nearly a year ago and nothing but crickets since. It doesn't seem that technically challenging. I wonder what the hold up is?
- sp332 8y ago
  Here's a VR text-input concept by Elevr. Using three dimensions you only need one hop from the center of a 3x3x3 cube to hold 26 letters, plus a space in the middle. http://elevr.com/keycube-3-torus-based-typing-in-vr/#h.a9zrfx4sar55 http://elevr.com/keycube-3-torus-based-typing-in-vr/#h.a9zrf... (This shows the setup but it's not the final version, because eventually they realized that returning your cursor to the center after each character works better with muscle memory.) So use various controller axes to indicate positive-neutral-negative for three axes, and you have a letter. If you use chording you can type reasonably fast. There is quite a learning curve though.
  - 8y ago
binarynate 8y ago
Vuplex VR Browser (f.k.a. Viewport) for iOS and Android is also worth checking out: https://vuplex.com https://vuplex.com It lets you create multiple windows and position / resize them.
- hndude 8y ago
  FYI it looks like in the iOS store its still called Viewport. Can't speak for the Android side though.
bluejekyll 8y ago
Out of curiosity, is this the project the Servo team got folded into? I seem to remember reading somewhere that they were being put onto a VR project.
- lastontheboat 8y ago
  Yes, but this release doesn't include any of that work that is not already in upstream Firefox.
_hardwaregeek 8y ago
We're not that far off from a Gibson-esque cyberspace. Just a matter of someone taking the time and effort.
joshumax 8y ago
Another thing to check out in this area is JanusVR. The thing about Janus is that it makes the internet navicable from an immersive perspective. Granted this requires adding FireBoxRoom code to your site in order to make everything 3D, but it does seem to fit the VR "paradigms" a bit better than what I'm seeing here from Firefox.
jedieaston 8y ago
Are they not bringing it to SteamVR? Most Vive owners don't use viveport (outside of China), due to the spooky services it puts on your machine.
- ngokevin 8y ago
  We have a VR-only browser on launched on SteamVR (Vive) / Oculus Store (Rift). Relevant to HN, we went through a recent YC batch. Still early but focused on 6DOF headsets, and ignoring 2D for now. http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/
gtramont 8y ago
VRML, anyone? :-)
- moron4hire 8y ago
  Gotta be one of these guys in every one of these threads.
  - gtramont 8y ago
    This was meant to be a joke. At the same time, it was meant to foster people's curiosity/education on what our industry has tried before. Sorry if it rubbed you the wrong way, though. Now an absolute honest question… how long do you think it'll be before we come across something like VRML again?
    - dmarcos 8y ago
      I’m one of the maintainers of A-Frame (aframe.io). VRML in spirit but with some learned lessons applied. Happy to answer any questions.
      - gtramont 8y ago
        Thanks! To be honest, mea culpa, I didn't look anything up before asking that question. Glad I did, though. Care to expand on the lessons learned?
        dmarcos 8y ago
        No problem, the question comes often. It’s understandable if you have not kept en eye on the space for a while. A-Frame is built on standards (HTML and WebGL), it runs on any browser without extensions or plugins. But it’s not a standard on itself so it can evolve much quicker and make design decisions based on real world usage by the community. While A-Frame offers high level primitives like `box`, `sphere`, `light`... the emphasis is on extensibility through an entity-component architecture. We aknowledge that A-Frame cannot anticipate all needs for all projects so we wanted to make very easy to extend and reuse 3rd party pieces.
flukus 8y ago
Just in time for the death of VR. In any case, why does the browser need to be VR aware? This is a job that should be left to the host OS or WM, not every client application.
- dmarcos 8y ago
  VR is a new kind of media you will be able to embed in a web page. Like video or sound. Browsers have to be able to render it.
  - dspig 8y ago
    LOL, sitting here with a VRML .wrl file I made in the late 90s. Maybe I can finally open it again, without a browser plug-in this time :)
    - perilunar 8y ago
      You can. see my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024485
RobLach 8y ago
I think it would be fascinating to study how old the people are who are into this.
- andybak 8y ago
  I'm 47
choicenotchance 8y ago
Wake me up when Iron Man style interface is developed to domestic ease of use, not"early stage"
choicenotchance 8y ago
Also will this be usable on Meta AR?
sebringj 8y ago
This reminds me of animating paperback book pages as a transition to directly linking web pages. The paradigm is leaking over to the new one where the new one doesn't have a good way to do it yet. Instead, I would have a hall with portals you could zoom up to as you wave your hand out in front of you, kind of like the iWatch but not sure the puke factor.
eclectric 8y ago
Browsing this on Nightly on Windows says: 'Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead'.
nkkollaw 8y ago
Cool, another good-looking experiment that Mozilla will phase out a few months after I start depending on it. If I had a Euro for every time I started using a Mozilla project that got cancelled...
- cyborgx7 8y ago
  Hear hear. That might be a big drawback of the very experimental release and fail method of development. You eventually start loosing trust in an organization that keeps giving you things, you make the effort to get used to them and then it takes them away. I'm sure the learning they get from it is very valuable, but you just spend a bunch time and energy and got nothing in the end.
  - nkkollaw 8y ago
    I completely lost trust, yes.
TekMol 8y ago
Maybe get 2D right before dabbling with VR? Firefox still does not support hardware encoding of videos on Linux. So when I watch Youtube videos my CPU usage goes through the roof and I cannot watch HD. xkcd even made a comic about it: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/
- pjmlp 8y ago
  On my case it works when I force enable it, but it leads to occasional X crashes.
  - TekMol 8y ago
    You can force enable hardware accelerated video encoding? How? And what difference do you notice when you watch Youtube videos?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      If your GPU driver supports it yes. Check "How to force-enable blocked graphics features". https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/upgrade-graphics-driver... https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drive... The difference is that my tiny netbook APU doesn't get bogged at 100% while playing videos, on an otherwise DX 11 class GPU.
      - TekMol 8y ago
        Are you sure you are talking about Linux? Those pages mention mostly Windows and say nothing about video at all. When I go to about:support I see "AzureCanvasAccelerated: 0" and "HW_COMPOSITING: Acceleration blocked by platform". Setting layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true and restarting FF does not change that. I tried it on 3 different machines with different graphic cards and different drivers and see the same behaviour on all 3.
        8y ago
cygx 8y ago
That's nice and all, but now that the hardware has caught up, where are the collaborative multi-user 3d hyperspaces à la Croquet Project/Open Cobalt?
- sciurus 8y ago
  Check out this project, also from Mozilla's emerging technology team: https://hubs.mozilla.com/ https://hubs.mozilla.com/ (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
- isaiahg 8y ago
  I think before they get big we needed a resolution update. Reading text is still difficult in VR and I can't see collaborative VR spaces getting big until texts start becoming more legible. Also I think we needed trackable office furniture and keyboards. Finding my keyboard blindly while in VR is a pain still. Once those issues are solved I think collaborative spaces will come. It's a good space for a startup to solve.
a_imho 8y ago
At a time when people are questioning the impact of technology on their lives and looking for leadership from independent organizations like Mozilla
- Traubenfuchs 8y ago
  Someone was paid to write that.
r41nbowdash 8y ago
Low content post, but i can't shake off the feeling we've been there already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqZpvOPI_aI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqZpvOPI_aI
fijal 8y ago
Would be really cool if you could just, you know, download the program and run it, not have to go through Viveport at all.
- larsberg 8y ago
  While we are on Viveport Mobile and all other relevant stores, a developer can always either build from sources or sideload the browser - https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/wiki/Sideload https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/wiki/Sidelo...
amelius 8y ago
I wonder what an obnoxious advertisement looks like in VR ...
protomikron 8y ago
Hm, I don't get it. There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas? I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in a 3D environment?
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I'm not sure if it's just about the 2D canvas. With WebXR (I think - I'm not too up-to-date on the field), websites can also offer VR examples. You will need a browser to discover them, but they can still be immersive - you just also need a 2D canvas for regular websites that get you there.
  - protomikron 8y ago
    > [...] websites can also offer VR examples. But for what exactly (despite ... porn)? Like I said I get the use-case for games and I also think there is potential for AR - but pure VR for the web? If it were that important to have 3D to represent information on the web, we would have a lot more 3D websites (without VR) already - which is technically possible for a long time.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      if you think of the web as a delivery vector for apps, it makes sense. Visiting a URL to play a VR game or initiate a VR experience makes sense and complies well with the original intent of URLs. Imagine launching (e.g.) minecraft.net and instead of a website, you get dropped into a demo version of the game with a contextual "frame" of information, links, and so on. Or a virtual showroom for a kitchen company where you can explore a 3d model of the kitchen, interact with the furnishings, and select new colours or models. Putting 3d content on a screen sucks in the same way that putting a 2d plane in 3d does. Making 3d content explorable in 3d makes a lot more sense.
    - 8y ago
orcs 8y ago
Is this just another Firefox OS? It strikes me as another side project they'll abandon later. I can understand Firefox OS, I wish they'd persevered, but I don't really get this. On its own I don't think this makes sense. Maybe in the context of an in game browser. But then who am I to comment.
- moosingin3space 8y ago
  I'll admit to not being particularly well-acquainted with VR, but a few observations: 1) This is being used as a target for Servo. Even if it ends up being useless (I won't pretend to be able to predict the future), the investigation into getting consistent 90+ FPS performance out of web rendering engines, regardless of content, is going to be excellent for the web. VR is a challenging environment for the Servo team to prove its technological prowess, and for many engineers, a challenging environment is exactly the kind of motivation necessary to push at boundaries. 2) Mozilla missed the "social" hype train and their mobile OS project was widely considered too little, too late (not to mention the terrible performance of mobile web engines at the time). Both of these areas are dominated by large, (effectively) proprietary vendors. Facebook's purchase of Oculus signaled to many that "social" was going to move to yet another platform. Mozilla's goal here is to get out in front of a potential VR hype train, keeping the open web as a major player in order to keep their mission relevant. 3) Mozilla believes the web is the ultimate platform for connecting people. It is one of the few markets with a political landmap that encourages collaboration between the multiple players. Therefore, for Mozilla, the capabilities of the web must always be expanded to prevent balkanization of the Internet into product-specific networks, such as Apple's iMessage. I am actually encouraged by their willingness to jump in front of VR, despite my own belief that VR won't be as relevant as many prognosticators think. This is my analysis, take it with multiple grains of salt.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
PedroBatista 8y ago
Is this another Firefox OS moment?

301 points by TD-Linux 8y ago

Awesome! I have all the parts in the bins, and now I have a reason to build a VR rig! But uh... I don't see linux on the compatibility lists, and I'm not using my work mac for this, and my gaming windows computers are too old (XP), and with lineageos on my phone without gapps... I'm not buying a bunch of proprietary hardware to play with a new open technology so geez I guess I can't play with it at all. Bummer.

nullpunkt 8y ago
nerrrrrdddddddd
dmarcos 8y ago
Browser vendors don’t control drivers or hardware support on the different OSs. VR is pretty much a Windows game today with limited and experimental Vive support on OSX and Linux. I’m sure that Mozilla in particular is eager to support linux.
- coffeeaddicted 8y ago
  Oculus GO is an Android system. No Windows involved. Unfortunately it has replaced the operating system with a shopping mall. You want that free Firefox download? Log-in to Facebook first. Every apk has to go over the shop, no sideloading. Which is a shame - would be a nice system if it only were more open.
- jhasse 8y ago
  > I’m sure that Mozilla in particular is eager to support linux. Why would you think that? Firefox treats its Linux version as a second-class citizen (e.g. no hardware acceleration).

adamrezich 8y ago

Not seeing it in the Viveport store myself...

larsberg 8y ago
Sorry - Firefox Reality is only currently available Viveport Mobile for all in one / standalone devices.

inawarminister 8y ago

Hmm, if only PSVR on PC is properly supported... Still, this is a nice project! But I remember some kind of virtual reality webpage a year back or so, or was it just custom made by some 4chan users back then?

daniel_iversen 8y ago

Doesn’t look that great in the screenshots to be honest - would be nice if it’s not just a gimmick because “we can” but some new paradigm of more effectively and immersive Ly consume the web... I mean - the kind of distraction free “reader mode” that you do in Safari, imagine if you had that in VR and then a 3D way to navigate between web docs/pages based on the links on the current page and smart topics - a bit like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu[1] project from the 60s or whenever - the real vision behind hypertext! EDIT: [1]: Bit is history on Xanadu https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ - and there’s a video of it somewhere and you can/could even download a real demo of it on floppy disk I seem to recall

dgzl 8y ago
> would be nice if it's not just a gimmick I mean, this is the future, right?
- usrusr 8y ago
  Don't you mean was the future? I have no idea what the current future is, all I know is that is doesn't include 3D TV sets and tablet computers replacing PCs (apparently, the PC can decline all on its own)
  - dgzl 8y ago
    If I were to guess, I imagine room-sized VR is the next step.

tokyodude 8y ago

FYI, a similar feature has been available for months in Chrome on Android under a flag. I don't remember which ones. Maybe chrome://flags/#vr-browsing-native-android-ui and chrome://flags/#vr-browsing-tab-view basically once enabled Chrome will show up as an app in the Daydream app launcher in VR I've only used it on Daydream but it's nice to be able to search in VR, use a virtual keyboard, and also run WebVR pages all without leaving VR.

zwerdlds 8y ago

Does anyone know if there's integration with WebGL?

TD-Linux 8y ago
Yeah there is, if you go to some of the sites on the home page there's an "enter VR" button, where the site does the equivalent of fullscreen for VR (it enters VR mode and it's much like a VR app).

nobody271 8y ago

The main problem with web browsing in VR is it's way too low resolution to read text and you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. But I guess, if you want to browse the web in VR you might as well do it in Firefox.

azernik 8y ago
> you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. Learn to touch type! (Though even then, you're stuck with the problem of finding your keyboard.)
- RototRobot 8y ago
  Logitech was working on a keyboard with a steamvr tracking puck https://uploadvr.com/vr-keyboard-logitech-vive-tacker/ https://uploadvr.com/vr-keyboard-logitech-vive-tacker/
  - ss2003 8y ago
    That announcement was nearly a year ago and nothing but crickets since. It doesn't seem that technically challenging. I wonder what the hold up is?
sp332 8y ago
Here's a VR text-input concept by Elevr. Using three dimensions you only need one hop from the center of a 3x3x3 cube to hold 26 letters, plus a space in the middle. http://elevr.com/keycube-3-torus-based-typing-in-vr/#h.a9zrfx4sar55 http://elevr.com/keycube-3-torus-based-typing-in-vr/#h.a9zrf... (This shows the setup but it's not the final version, because eventually they realized that returning your cursor to the center after each character works better with muscle memory.) So use various controller axes to indicate positive-neutral-negative for three axes, and you have a letter. If you use chording you can type reasonably fast. There is quite a learning curve though.
- 8y ago

binarynate 8y ago

Vuplex VR Browser (f.k.a. Viewport) for iOS and Android is also worth checking out: https://vuplex.com https://vuplex.com It lets you create multiple windows and position / resize them.

hndude 8y ago
FYI it looks like in the iOS store its still called Viewport. Can't speak for the Android side though.

bluejekyll 8y ago

Out of curiosity, is this the project the Servo team got folded into? I seem to remember reading somewhere that they were being put onto a VR project.

lastontheboat 8y ago
Yes, but this release doesn't include any of that work that is not already in upstream Firefox.

_hardwaregeek 8y ago

We're not that far off from a Gibson-esque cyberspace. Just a matter of someone taking the time and effort.

joshumax 8y ago

Another thing to check out in this area is JanusVR. The thing about Janus is that it makes the internet navicable from an immersive perspective. Granted this requires adding FireBoxRoom code to your site in order to make everything 3D, but it does seem to fit the VR "paradigms" a bit better than what I'm seeing here from Firefox.

jedieaston 8y ago

Are they not bringing it to SteamVR? Most Vive owners don't use viveport (outside of China), due to the spooky services it puts on your machine.

ngokevin 8y ago
We have a VR-only browser on launched on SteamVR (Vive) / Oculus Store (Rift). Relevant to HN, we went through a recent YC batch. Still early but focused on 6DOF headsets, and ignoring 2D for now. http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/

gtramont 8y ago

VRML, anyone? :-)

moron4hire 8y ago
Gotta be one of these guys in every one of these threads.
- gtramont 8y ago
  This was meant to be a joke. At the same time, it was meant to foster people's curiosity/education on what our industry has tried before. Sorry if it rubbed you the wrong way, though. Now an absolute honest question… how long do you think it'll be before we come across something like VRML again?
  - dmarcos 8y ago
    I’m one of the maintainers of A-Frame (aframe.io). VRML in spirit but with some learned lessons applied. Happy to answer any questions.
    - gtramont 8y ago
      Thanks! To be honest, mea culpa, I didn't look anything up before asking that question. Glad I did, though. Care to expand on the lessons learned?
      - dmarcos 8y ago
        No problem, the question comes often. It’s understandable if you have not kept en eye on the space for a while. A-Frame is built on standards (HTML and WebGL), it runs on any browser without extensions or plugins. But it’s not a standard on itself so it can evolve much quicker and make design decisions based on real world usage by the community. While A-Frame offers high level primitives like `box`, `sphere`, `light`... the emphasis is on extensibility through an entity-component architecture. We aknowledge that A-Frame cannot anticipate all needs for all projects so we wanted to make very easy to extend and reuse 3rd party pieces.

flukus 8y ago

Just in time for the death of VR. In any case, why does the browser need to be VR aware? This is a job that should be left to the host OS or WM, not every client application.

dmarcos 8y ago
VR is a new kind of media you will be able to embed in a web page. Like video or sound. Browsers have to be able to render it.
- dspig 8y ago
  LOL, sitting here with a VRML .wrl file I made in the late 90s. Maybe I can finally open it again, without a browser plug-in this time :)
  - perilunar 8y ago
    You can. see my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024485

RobLach 8y ago

I think it would be fascinating to study how old the people are who are into this.

andybak 8y ago
I'm 47

choicenotchance 8y ago

Wake me up when Iron Man style interface is developed to domestic ease of use, not"early stage"

choicenotchance 8y ago

Also will this be usable on Meta AR?

sebringj 8y ago

This reminds me of animating paperback book pages as a transition to directly linking web pages. The paradigm is leaking over to the new one where the new one doesn't have a good way to do it yet. Instead, I would have a hall with portals you could zoom up to as you wave your hand out in front of you, kind of like the iWatch but not sure the puke factor.

eclectric 8y ago

Browsing this on Nightly on Windows says: 'Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead'.

nkkollaw 8y ago

Cool, another good-looking experiment that Mozilla will phase out a few months after I start depending on it. If I had a Euro for every time I started using a Mozilla project that got cancelled...

cyborgx7 8y ago
Hear hear. That might be a big drawback of the very experimental release and fail method of development. You eventually start loosing trust in an organization that keeps giving you things, you make the effort to get used to them and then it takes them away. I'm sure the learning they get from it is very valuable, but you just spend a bunch time and energy and got nothing in the end.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  I completely lost trust, yes.

TekMol 8y ago

Maybe get 2D right before dabbling with VR? Firefox still does not support hardware encoding of videos on Linux. So when I watch Youtube videos my CPU usage goes through the roof and I cannot watch HD. xkcd even made a comic about it: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/

pjmlp 8y ago
On my case it works when I force enable it, but it leads to occasional X crashes.
- TekMol 8y ago
  You can force enable hardware accelerated video encoding? How? And what difference do you notice when you watch Youtube videos?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    If your GPU driver supports it yes. Check "How to force-enable blocked graphics features". https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/upgrade-graphics-driver... https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drive... The difference is that my tiny netbook APU doesn't get bogged at 100% while playing videos, on an otherwise DX 11 class GPU.
    - TekMol 8y ago
      Are you sure you are talking about Linux? Those pages mention mostly Windows and say nothing about video at all. When I go to about:support I see "AzureCanvasAccelerated: 0" and "HW_COMPOSITING: Acceleration blocked by platform". Setting layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true and restarting FF does not change that. I tried it on 3 different machines with different graphic cards and different drivers and see the same behaviour on all 3.
      - 8y ago

cygx 8y ago

That's nice and all, but now that the hardware has caught up, where are the collaborative multi-user 3d hyperspaces à la Croquet Project/Open Cobalt?

sciurus 8y ago
Check out this project, also from Mozilla's emerging technology team: https://hubs.mozilla.com/ https://hubs.mozilla.com/ (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
isaiahg 8y ago
I think before they get big we needed a resolution update. Reading text is still difficult in VR and I can't see collaborative VR spaces getting big until texts start becoming more legible. Also I think we needed trackable office furniture and keyboards. Finding my keyboard blindly while in VR is a pain still. Once those issues are solved I think collaborative spaces will come. It's a good space for a startup to solve.

a_imho 8y ago

At a time when people are questioning the impact of technology on their lives and looking for leadership from independent organizations like Mozilla

Traubenfuchs 8y ago
Someone was paid to write that.

r41nbowdash 8y ago

Low content post, but i can't shake off the feeling we've been there already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqZpvOPI_aI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqZpvOPI_aI

fijal 8y ago

Would be really cool if you could just, you know, download the program and run it, not have to go through Viveport at all.

larsberg 8y ago
While we are on Viveport Mobile and all other relevant stores, a developer can always either build from sources or sideload the browser - https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/wiki/Sideload https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/wiki/Sidelo...

amelius 8y ago

I wonder what an obnoxious advertisement looks like in VR ...

protomikron 8y ago

Hm, I don't get it. There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas? I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in a 3D environment?

Vinnl 8y ago
I'm not sure if it's just about the 2D canvas. With WebXR (I think - I'm not too up-to-date on the field), websites can also offer VR examples. You will need a browser to discover them, but they can still be immersive - you just also need a 2D canvas for regular websites that get you there.
- protomikron 8y ago
  > [...] websites can also offer VR examples. But for what exactly (despite ... porn)? Like I said I get the use-case for games and I also think there is potential for AR - but pure VR for the web? If it were that important to have 3D to represent information on the web, we would have a lot more 3D websites (without VR) already - which is technically possible for a long time.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    if you think of the web as a delivery vector for apps, it makes sense. Visiting a URL to play a VR game or initiate a VR experience makes sense and complies well with the original intent of URLs. Imagine launching (e.g.) minecraft.net and instead of a website, you get dropped into a demo version of the game with a contextual "frame" of information, links, and so on. Or a virtual showroom for a kitchen company where you can explore a 3d model of the kitchen, interact with the furnishings, and select new colours or models. Putting 3d content on a screen sucks in the same way that putting a 2d plane in 3d does. Making 3d content explorable in 3d makes a lot more sense.
  - 8y ago

orcs 8y ago

Is this just another Firefox OS? It strikes me as another side project they'll abandon later. I can understand Firefox OS, I wish they'd persevered, but I don't really get this. On its own I don't think this makes sense. Maybe in the context of an in game browser. But then who am I to comment.

moosingin3space 8y ago
I'll admit to not being particularly well-acquainted with VR, but a few observations: 1) This is being used as a target for Servo. Even if it ends up being useless (I won't pretend to be able to predict the future), the investigation into getting consistent 90+ FPS performance out of web rendering engines, regardless of content, is going to be excellent for the web. VR is a challenging environment for the Servo team to prove its technological prowess, and for many engineers, a challenging environment is exactly the kind of motivation necessary to push at boundaries. 2) Mozilla missed the "social" hype train and their mobile OS project was widely considered too little, too late (not to mention the terrible performance of mobile web engines at the time). Both of these areas are dominated by large, (effectively) proprietary vendors. Facebook's purchase of Oculus signaled to many that "social" was going to move to yet another platform. Mozilla's goal here is to get out in front of a potential VR hype train, keeping the open web as a major player in order to keep their mission relevant. 3) Mozilla believes the web is the ultimate platform for connecting people. It is one of the few markets with a political landmap that encourages collaboration between the multiple players. Therefore, for Mozilla, the capabilities of the web must always be expanded to prevent balkanization of the Internet into product-specific networks, such as Apple's iMessage. I am actually encouraged by their willingness to jump in front of VR, despite my own belief that VR won't be as relevant as many prognosticators think. This is my analysis, take it with multiple grains of salt.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

PedroBatista 8y ago

Is this another Firefox OS moment?