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This is super cool. I wish WebVR was still a thing and that it had gotten more love, better browser support and more libraries adept at handling head tracking,
by noduerme 4y ago
This is super cool. I wish WebVR was still a thing and that it had gotten more love, better browser support and more libraries adept at handling head tracking, stereoscopy, etc. During that brief period where it was standard in Chrome, I happened to be bidding a bunch of interior architectural designs for a client, so I scrapped together a demo script in ThreeJS that let me stitch together prerendered stereo panoramic renderings, and insert some interactive 3D objects / animations inside the skylight space. I patched in support for the pointer remote from the original Oculus Rift, and just stuck our architectural renderings on a private website and mailed the client a couple Oculus Rifts as a gift to check them out. It was a big "wow" factor and landed us a lot more work.
None of this is to say that it would be a great idea to build websites this way. Websites are made to convey the desired information quickly, so unless the desired information is a full 3D understanding of a space I have a hard time seeing the utility of building out a 3D space as a metaphor for information. Did that make sense? Let me say it differently: We've tried a lot of visual metaphors in my life for organizing and exploring information spaces. As it turns out, the simpler ones are usually the most easily grasped and therefore the most efficient at doing their job (i.e., remaining "invisible" and serving as a transparent container for information). Even 3D interfaces that do serve the purpose of conveying spatial relationships and art often fall into the trap of trying to do too much. This is not meant as a paean to minimalism (at all - I love clever interfaces and I appreciate when information design makes you figure out a paradigm to get the most out of interacting with it - as long as "the most" is defined as more interesting views of the data I'm trying to get at). Just to say that design should showcase content, not itself, except in the case where the content is supposed to showcase the design, and then you can go nuts.
- meheleventyone 4y agoWebVR is still a thing with WebXR and at least the browser devs at Meta are pushing it forward.