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Wolvic, a new browser project picking up where Firefox Reality leaves off
- jraph 5y agoIt seems based on Gecko? > Mozilla invested a lot into R&D in XR in the late 2010s, and in late 2018 they released an experimental browser called Firefox Reality. It was a great entry into the XR field, helping establish what a browser in these devices really looks like, and figure out the unique challenges. Today we’re excited to take up this experiment and continue this work as a complete project. > [links to https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/update-on-firefox-reality/ https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/update-on-firefox-reality/] A Gecko-based browser would be refreshing! Igalia really seems to do interesting stuff.
- orra 5y ago> Igalia really seems to do interesting stuff. A lot of which is WebKit based, so this is indeed an interesting twist.
- jraph 5y agoYes, they even say it in the post, which is a bit confusing since I was specifically looking for this.
- eole666 5y agoWell, I hope they'll contribute to Gecko to make it faster at rendering 3D with WebGL, or even help adding WebGPU support. Because for now, perfs aint good compared to chromium based browsers... Firefox is often way slower when using heavy 3D apps.
- skywal_l 5y agoI didn't know that. Why would firefox be slower than say chrome when if you use WebGL, the work is being done by the GPU anyway?
- colonwqbang 5y agoPerhaps Chrome utilises the GPU more efficiently than Firefox does.
- jshdjidnebba 5y agoYou have to shuffle heaps of data between Javascript and the gpu, I’ve found Firefox’s js engine to be slower at doing that. Firefox also seems to call the garbage collector much more often, and do it’s business a bit slower. Normally you don’t notice, but trying to keep things at 60fps it shows up rather quickly. N=1
- skywal_l 5y agoOk so what's slower is the JS engine which is a more reasonable claim. My experience is it depends on the types of work your doing but in general, indeed, chrome seems faster. But Firefox has improved a lot with quantum.
- sfink 5y agoIf you have a nice reproducible case of the garbage collection problem, please file a bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&component=JavaScript%3A+GC https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&comp... and I'll take a look. I've seen some similar issues, but I don't have anything good to work against right now. (The first thing I'll do is grab a profile with https://profiler.firefox.com https://profiler.firefox.com and that'll immediately tell basically what's going on. You could grab one too, and that'll be useful even if there's not an easy way to give me a reproduction.) There's also a very recently landed change that might help, if the problem happens to be excessively long minor GCs (which is what I've seen with similar sites): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1751162 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1751162 Shuffling data to the GPU could be an interesting case too, but that's not handled by the JS engine itself so I'm not as familiar with how that works. It sounds like it might be worth a bug if there isn't one already (and feel free to file; we'll triage and determine if it's a duplicate.)
- The_rationalist 5y agono GPU drivers do not support webGL natively.. Although gecko use Angle from google, 3D rendering is a multifactorial problems that can be optimized from many aspects of a web browser (display lists vs immediate rendering, various caching systems, direct compositing, a lot of low level optimizations, reducing memcpys, etc)
- jdashg 5y agoFeel free to file bugs! I do like fixing WebGL perf issues!
- jmnicolas 5y agoThanks for your service!
- Yoric 5y agoOh, is that the case? Last time I checked (which was admittedly 2-3 years ago), Chrome had considerable lag with VR whereas Firefox managed much better. Might depend on the GPU, of course.
- bkardell 5y agoWe do right?! Thanks.
- fabrice_d 5y agoCan you confirm this is a Gecko based browser? I find the wording a bit ambiguous in the article. Thanks!
- flakiness 5y agoIt is clear from the website https://www.wolvic.com/ https://www.wolvic.com/ > Wolvic begins a new branch of the evolutionary tree of the Firefox Reality Browser.
- bkardell 5y agoWolvic begins its evolutionary fork pretty close to where Firefox Reality left off, so yes, it is Gecko based.
- fabrice_d 5y agoNice! Is Igalia planning to work on webXR support for Gecko?
- The_rationalist 5y ago
- mauricioc 5y agoFirefox Reality also supports Servo as a browser engine, so this might be even more exciting! https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality#experimental-servo-support https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality#experimenta...
- nicce 5y agoIsnt Servo kinda dead project?
- DiabloD3 5y agoNot in a way that doesn't also state Firefox is dead.
- qw3rty01 5y agoWell the linux foundation picked it up when mozilla dropped it so it's not dead, but the last commit was also 8 days ago so not very active either
- fire 5y agoAs far as oss projects go, eight days ago seems pretty active compared to the usual "inactive project" having last commit dates of months ago
- aloisdg 5y ago> There is, of course, Firefox. Brave has a lion as a mascot, there are Puma and Dolphin browsers, and many smaller and historical browsers and projects within the browser space are named after animals But the wolf name is already taken and on a browser based on Firefox too https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ Note that I am still mad that librewolf was not named Windwolf or Waterwolf instead.
- jeroenhd 5y agoI think Waterwolf would get confused with Waterfox. Only a matter of time before wind and earth also get claimed by Firefox forks, though. New ones seem to pop up every year or so.
- ilyu 5y agoVolvic is a brand of water then Wolvic is probably a mineral water wolf
- yashasolutions 5y agothey do have an ad with a wolf
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoThe name is a little confusing, and makes it clear they are not native English speakers. It's not a bad name, but if someone says to me, "Hey, did you try Wolvic yet?" I'll spell it "Wolfic" or "Wolfik" or "Wolfick", definitely not "Wolvic". Confusing.
- jraph 5y agoI would pronounce the 'v' in Wolvic like in "vision" and the in your words 'f' like in "elfic". Which would make it clear Wolvic is written with a v. Would I be wrong? (not a native English speaker) (we have a town called Volvic here, known for its water. Pronounced like in "vision". I would pronounce Wolvic the same way, except the first letter would be pronounced like in "well") (the English pronunciation is not a gift)
- TingPing 5y agoIt is clear to me as a native English speaker. We do have "wolves" already.
- bialpio 5y agoAlso not a native speaker, I'd use the same pronunciation as you ("v" in "wolvic" is the same as in "elven", "f" in "wolfic"/"wolfish" is the same as in "elfic"/"elfish"). But the difference is quite subtle, I see it can be hard to tell apart in casual conversation when people pay less attention to enunciation.
- darrenf 5y agoWhereas to my UK eyes it's instantly reminiscent of Volvic[0] mineral water, which is definitely a V sound and doesn't read or sound strange at all (see also: pelvic, civic, Slavic). It wouldn't occur to me that there might be an F sound. [0] https://www.volvic.co.uk/ https://www.volvic.co.uk/
- jraph 5y agoIndeed, and wolves seems to be pronounced with a v both in the US and in the UK. > UK: /wʊlvz/ US: (wŏŏlvz) https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/wolves https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/wolves You did think of Volvic as well!
- freediver 5y agoLooks like they are jumping on the whole "Meta" train, with enough expertise to make a dent. I would be astonished though, if people used a web browser in virtual reality to do serious work.
- bkardell 5y agoI get this take... You might find my post on this topic interesting https://bkardell.com/blog/wolvic.html https://bkardell.com/blog/wolvic.html
- astlouis44 5y agoVery excited to see this, my ongoing prediction is that the metaverse will be WebXR based. No 30% cut from walled gardens, and sites can evolve from static, 2D flat experiences to immersive ones. Of course, apps will work day one on any headset in a platform-agnostic manner. And for the spark, just wait until the Apple headset ships with WebXR and WebGPU supported by default.... Also, my team are currently working on bringing Unreal Engine to WebXR.
- mlajtos 5y agoOne Metaverse based on WebXR + CRDT for shared state of the world on top of WebRTC, please. With React on top. UE5?
- mlajtos 5y agoFantastic piece of history about TBL and Ian Ritchie. When APK of Wolvic for Quest 2? Edit — found it: https://github.com/Igalia/wolvic/releases/download/0.9.3/Wolvic-oculusvr-arm64.apk https://github.com/Igalia/wolvic/releases/download/0.9.3/Wol...
- mycall 5y agoThis reminds me of Virtual Desktop on Value.
- Vinnl 5y agoVery compelling post, thanks for sharing!
- flakiness 5y ago"As of today, Igalia has secured partial funding over the next two years" Wondering who is funding the project, or does this mean they use their own money to fund this? That sounds more brave than Brave imo. Good luck!
- stanlarroque 5y agoWe are going to integrate this in our Lynx R-1 headset! Great to have something else than just chromium in this space.
- ghotli 5y agoI hadn't heard of these headsets. Is public developer documentation available?
- stanlarroque 5y agoBy March we will release our OpenXR SDK. Our website for now is https://lynx-r.com https://lynx-r.com
- ushakov 5y ago
- dang 5y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It poisons (and dumbs down) the ecosystem to post generic dismissals like this, so please don't. Of course, most projects end up failing - but that's a bad reason to direct this sort of barb at specific ones. If you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
- josephcsible 5y agoI'm always in favor of new browsers that are FOSS and don't use Blink!
- binarynate 5y agoThis is really interesting. Last night I was looking at FireFox Reality's repo and was pleasantly surprised to see [some newer commits][1]. Now today I see that Wolvic is [a fork of FireFox Reality][2] and that the commits were contributed from that project. I'm happy to see a private company fund new work on this front. [1]: https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/commits/main https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/commits/mai... [2]: https://github.com/Igalia/wolvic https://github.com/Igalia/wolvic
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lucic71 5y ago
- lostmsu 5y agoHas anyone actually tried FF Reality/Wolvic and can comment on the text quality in XR?
- d3nj4l 5y agoI use FFR on my Oculus Quest 2. IME, text quality is more constrained by the res of the device, and I personally find it painful to read on my Quest - whether in FFR or Immersed - for extended periods. Others don't seem to have the issue, and people on HN have posted about working full-time in VR, so YMMV.
- lostmsu 5y agoThe question is about font rendering. Do they rasterize text into a texture, then draw the texture on a 3D plane in VR introducing artifacts at the second step, or do they rasterize text directly in 3D space using the view matrices?