8 ms·

WebXR

161 points by based2 3y ago

jade-cat 3y ago
Wonder what's the story behind this not being made by the Khronos Group. Especially since, at least according to Wikipedia, it's based on Vladimir Vukićević's work. The name choice is interesting. If one of the first things in your FAQ is "the name probably made you think this is thing X. it's not", then maybe there was a flaw in your naming process.
- bckr 3y ago
  I think this is the wrong post
  - jade-cat 3y ago
    I'm talking about WebXR, which is for some reason the name of the standard developed by W3C. "As such it may seem like WebXR and OpenXR have a relationship like WebGL and OpenGL, where the web API is a near 1:1 mapping of the native API. This is not the case with WebXR and OpenXR, as they are distinct APIs being developed by different standards bodies." from https://github.com/immersive-web/webxr/blob/master/explainer.md https://github.com/immersive-web/webxr/blob/master/explainer...
    - moron4hire 3y ago
      There are many other browser APIs named "WebSomething". WebAudio, WebUSB, WebBluetooth. This is a really silly complaint to have.
      - foolswisdom 3y ago
        The complaint wasn't about the web prefix, it's the ambiguity of the name.
        moron4hire 3y ago
        Alright, fine. WebVR predates OpenXR by about 3 years. When WebVR was renamed to WebXR, OpenXR existed in name only, and nobody knew if, once the spec even came out, it would get adopted. It wasn't a well-known name at large by that point, and there was significant concern from the W3C to avoid confusion with creating separate WebVR and WebAR APIs. So, "they should have been careful to avoid confusion with OpenXR" gets it backwards, over-assigning the ownership of "XR"-named things to Khronos. Source: I was there for the discussions.
- dmarcos 3y ago
  If you want Apple involved they don’t like working under Khronos. IP disputes in the past. See also WebGPU API started as WebVR, was renamed to WebXR since now accommodates more than VR (AR, MR…) I worked with Vlad at Mozilla in the early WebVR days (I co-design while at Mozilla and now maintain A-Frame)
prophesi 3y ago
Won't be touching WebXR again until iOS implements it. There's an experimental feature flag to enable it, so hopefully this actually happens soon.
- te_chris 3y ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Not being able to deploy to the most powerful devices is a real constraint of actually using the API
  - rchaud 3y ago
    What bottlenecks have you come across that would solved if it ran on an iPhone?
    - prophesi 3y ago
      A few years ago I helped build a WebXR (Well, I think it was the WebVR specification) site for both Android and iOS, back when Motion & Orientation Access was possible on the latter platform. It worked pretty well, until it was no longer possible to access that API and we had to spend countless hours on a static fallback for iOS. The gyroscope is all you need for a relatively novel experience, ThreeJS had a VR shooter example you could easily extend, and not needing to download an app was great for getting more people to check it out.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Why would you want this on a phone though? It's for VR headsets.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fmajid 3y ago
    You want one API that will work on all devices. Take this demo: https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ On a VR headset you can just crane your neck and look around. On a phone or tablet it will use the accelerometer and let you use the device as a window on the virtual reality. On desktop you can use the mouse to scroll around.
diegocg 3y ago
This is the kind of thing that makes me lose any hope in web browsers. Normal browsing is getting worse, web apps are still unable to provide a truly native-like experience. But instead of fixing these core problems, let's add yet another corner case API...
- rchaud 3y ago
  Normal browsing is fine; the good stuff is just paywalled. The non-paywalled stuff is getting worse to browse through, for obvious reasons.
folli 3y ago
Some time ago, I created a tech demo to display topographical terrain models in AR (the ultimate goal is to be able to show GPS tracks as an AR model on your desk), see here: https://r-follador.github.io/cubetrekXR/ https://r-follador.github.io/cubetrekXR/ It makes use of Model-Viewer, which in turn uses Scene Viewer and ARCore on compatible Android devices, and Quick-Look and ARKit on compatible iOS devices. At the bottom there's also a WebXR implementation using Babylon.js.
hoc 3y ago
For me the main advantage of WebXR is that one can create complex 3D objects at runtime/on the fly without havjbg to load them as assets or compiling them into the binary. Any thougts on the best way to do this in classic runtimes like Unity or Unreal (which scripting plugins, which base construction objects/assets?)? The main issue I have with WebXR, though, is it being canvas-based instead of being page/HTML-based, resulting in graphic-oriented products instead of structure-oriented ones (e.g. 3D web pages) which would allow placing all the dynamic and complex HTML objects that were developed over the last few years. Any good known approach to solve this?
- andybak 3y ago
  Not sure what you're asking, exactly? Unity (and I presume Unreal) can do the same procedural generation stuff today your can do in js. There's many libraries/tutorials etc
  - hoc 3y ago
    Basically i'd like to add, edit, store and load code during runtime.
    - andybak 3y ago
      Oh, code? I assumed you meant geometry and/or materials. Yes, it's possible. I can think of several ways to approach it. Not quite as cleanly as with javaScript, mind.
      - hoc 3y ago
        Heh. What would be your favourite thoughts/combo here? Sorry for not being clear on the code part. I assumed USD and the like would be the norm now. "Complex objects" is not really helpful in this context, though.
        andybak 3y ago
        USD is fairly widely used. But it's not "code" in the sense that I mean it. It's (mostly) declarative (like HTML) so I lump it in with obj, fbx and gltf. I am assuming code means "executable code" - I know the boundaries are fuzzy here and some file formats are Turing complete - but I guess what I'm saying is that I'm still not sure what you're asking!
fmajid 3y ago
It’s a low-level API. You’d typically use it under something like Aframe or Three.JS.
kevlened 3y ago
You can experience this on iPhone by installing Mozilla's WebXR Viewer [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webxr-viewer/id1295998056 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webxr-viewer/id1295998056], then opening the dinosaur demo [https://www.xrdinosaurs.com/ https://www.xrdinosaurs.com/]
- dmarcos 3y ago
  Important to mention. Team at Mozilla was affected by layoffs a couple of years back and the WebXR viewer is no longer maintained. Ships an old version of the WebXR API. Don’t recommend as dev target
- ilaksh 3y ago
  So Safari doesn't support the WebXR standard? Sometimes I really hope the AIs take over sooner rather than later.
  - kfarr 3y ago
    Not yet but fingers crossed for the new apple headset driving more demand for such
    - techisneat 3y ago
      Crossing my fingers as well. Without this, it’s been a huge pain to develops what our startup needs right now.
eole666 3y ago
VR was really impressive a few years ago, it was running only on gaming computers with VR headsets. Now, with the quest 2 (far less powerfull than the gaming computers mentioned above) and web XR, it seems that developers are targeting mainly low end platforms, and so recent apps and games are rather less immersive than before mainly due to dated graphic quality, and lags when you play it on the quest (who has just a powerfull phone cpu/gpu, poor thing), or in a browser. I hope webgpu will changes that in the browser, and surely an other autonomous headset will arise with a cpu comparable to the apple M1/M2.
moron4hire 3y ago
I built a VR platform for a small, foreign language training services firm. WebXR made it possible for us to target the lowest-friction device available (Meta Quest 2) while also not having to slow our project velocity by having to submit updates for approval in the app store. People who say JS on the Quest 2 isn't fast enough to do good VR don't know what they are talking about. The problem is that a lot of small, indie developers only know the most naive way to implement things and then blame the platform for their lack of algorithms training. I had originally started the project in Unity 3D. I eventually rewrote everything in WebXR because--while the naive path in Unity was faster than WebXR--the ideal path in Unity was nearly impossible to implement. I haven't done anything in Unity for about 3 years now, so maybe it has changed, but basic things like decoding textures happen on the render thread, which makes it impossible to use the Unity happy path to implement a dynamic XR app that wasn't prone to making people puke. While I was still tilting at the Unity windmill, I had a large amount of code that was just dedicated to decoding images before using them as textures, tasks Unity should have been able to handle itself, except for the fact that Unity is built by people who have never had to make a game or app themselves before. There's a reason the loading screens on VR Chat are so long and boring--they can't slipstream live objects in because they haven't done the hard work of throwing away 90% of Unity's bullshit framework code. So they have to hide the dropped frames behind a scene fade-in/fade-out. With WebXR, you get the full browser ecosystem to work with. Web Workers. Web Audio being off-render-thread by default. Fetch API. IndexedDB. It's somewhat popular to complain about Web APIs because some of them have some weird quirks and most of them don't agree on how to design an API, but you have no idea how much worse it can get. If you think browser app development is bad, trying making an app in Unity sometime.
ghostwreck 3y ago
I love the open web and want solutions like this to win but 3D experiences built on the web seem to fall flat. Any AAA games on the web? How far is state of art native desktop 3D vs 3D through the web? Add on XR (IMU, camera, geo-tracking, AI processing) and it falls even further. It would be interesting to see some side-by-side comparisons.
- dmarcos 3y ago
  Don’t have precise answers to your questions but let me reframe. AAA games that pushes HW to the limit is a small fraction of all content. Among most popular content on Quest you have VR Chat, Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Job Simulator: Indie titles def not AAA that the browser would be more than capable to deliver today. https://moonrider.xyz/ https://moonrider.xyz/ for example has 60-100k VR MAUs (300k at peak on Holyday season 2021). Tech is no longer a blocker to build good WebXR content and grow an audience. Mozilla, Google and now the Meta Browser team have done excellent work to get us here
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zmmmmm 3y ago
It's going to be really interesting to see if Apple's headset will support WebXR. If so it will probably be the only way to get open VR/AR content on there and could drive a huge expansion in its use. Which would be a great thing because it's much nicer to work with (from my admittedly, very meagre experience) than having to build things in Unity etc.
- rchaud 3y ago
  It won't, for the same reasons that web apps weren't allowed on the App Store 15 years ago.
  - marcellus23 3y ago
    What does the App Store have to do with it? Apple supported adding web apps to the Home Screen from the very first iPhone OS.
  - cvan 3y ago
    On iOS, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Experimental Features. (Or on macOS desktop, from the Develop menu.) Scroll to the bottom of the list. There are 4 WebXR APIs behind a flag. Why waste precious WebKit resources on implementing WebXR APIs in Apple's browser engine… if WebXR will hypothetically never be shipped to Safari stable?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dmarcos 3y ago
  Eventually but unlikely in the short term. Web APIs commoditize platform and hardware features. Browser content doesn’t contribute to user lock-in and takes away from exclusive apps where Apple generates revenue. We’ll probably see WebXR when hardware is effectively a commodity because competition has caught up.

161 points by based2 3y ago

Wonder what's the story behind this not being made by the Khronos Group. Especially since, at least according to Wikipedia, it's based on Vladimir Vukićević's work. The name choice is interesting. If one of the first things in your FAQ is "the name probably made you think this is thing X. it's not", then maybe there was a flaw in your naming process.

bckr 3y ago
I think this is the wrong post
- jade-cat 3y ago
  I'm talking about WebXR, which is for some reason the name of the standard developed by W3C. "As such it may seem like WebXR and OpenXR have a relationship like WebGL and OpenGL, where the web API is a near 1:1 mapping of the native API. This is not the case with WebXR and OpenXR, as they are distinct APIs being developed by different standards bodies." from https://github.com/immersive-web/webxr/blob/master/explainer.md https://github.com/immersive-web/webxr/blob/master/explainer...
  - moron4hire 3y ago
    There are many other browser APIs named "WebSomething". WebAudio, WebUSB, WebBluetooth. This is a really silly complaint to have.
    - foolswisdom 3y ago
      The complaint wasn't about the web prefix, it's the ambiguity of the name.
      - moron4hire 3y ago
        Alright, fine. WebVR predates OpenXR by about 3 years. When WebVR was renamed to WebXR, OpenXR existed in name only, and nobody knew if, once the spec even came out, it would get adopted. It wasn't a well-known name at large by that point, and there was significant concern from the W3C to avoid confusion with creating separate WebVR and WebAR APIs. So, "they should have been careful to avoid confusion with OpenXR" gets it backwards, over-assigning the ownership of "XR"-named things to Khronos. Source: I was there for the discussions.
dmarcos 3y ago
If you want Apple involved they don’t like working under Khronos. IP disputes in the past. See also WebGPU API started as WebVR, was renamed to WebXR since now accommodates more than VR (AR, MR…) I worked with Vlad at Mozilla in the early WebVR days (I co-design while at Mozilla and now maintain A-Frame)

prophesi 3y ago

Won't be touching WebXR again until iOS implements it. There's an experimental feature flag to enable it, so hopefully this actually happens soon.

te_chris 3y ago
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Not being able to deploy to the most powerful devices is a real constraint of actually using the API
- rchaud 3y ago
  What bottlenecks have you come across that would solved if it ran on an iPhone?
  - prophesi 3y ago
    A few years ago I helped build a WebXR (Well, I think it was the WebVR specification) site for both Android and iOS, back when Motion & Orientation Access was possible on the latter platform. It worked pretty well, until it was no longer possible to access that API and we had to spend countless hours on a static fallback for iOS. The gyroscope is all you need for a relatively novel experience, ThreeJS had a VR shooter example you could easily extend, and not needing to download an app was great for getting more people to check it out.
IshKebab 3y ago
Why would you want this on a phone though? It's for VR headsets.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fmajid 3y ago
  You want one API that will work on all devices. Take this demo: https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ https://aframe.io/examples/showcase/sky/ On a VR headset you can just crane your neck and look around. On a phone or tablet it will use the accelerometer and let you use the device as a window on the virtual reality. On desktop you can use the mouse to scroll around.

diegocg 3y ago

This is the kind of thing that makes me lose any hope in web browsers. Normal browsing is getting worse, web apps are still unable to provide a truly native-like experience. But instead of fixing these core problems, let's add yet another corner case API...

rchaud 3y ago
Normal browsing is fine; the good stuff is just paywalled. The non-paywalled stuff is getting worse to browse through, for obvious reasons.

folli 3y ago

Some time ago, I created a tech demo to display topographical terrain models in AR (the ultimate goal is to be able to show GPS tracks as an AR model on your desk), see here: https://r-follador.github.io/cubetrekXR/ https://r-follador.github.io/cubetrekXR/ It makes use of Model-Viewer, which in turn uses Scene Viewer and ARCore on compatible Android devices, and Quick-Look and ARKit on compatible iOS devices. At the bottom there's also a WebXR implementation using Babylon.js.

hoc 3y ago

For me the main advantage of WebXR is that one can create complex 3D objects at runtime/on the fly without havjbg to load them as assets or compiling them into the binary. Any thougts on the best way to do this in classic runtimes like Unity or Unreal (which scripting plugins, which base construction objects/assets?)? The main issue I have with WebXR, though, is it being canvas-based instead of being page/HTML-based, resulting in graphic-oriented products instead of structure-oriented ones (e.g. 3D web pages) which would allow placing all the dynamic and complex HTML objects that were developed over the last few years. Any good known approach to solve this?

andybak 3y ago
Not sure what you're asking, exactly? Unity (and I presume Unreal) can do the same procedural generation stuff today your can do in js. There's many libraries/tutorials etc
- hoc 3y ago
  Basically i'd like to add, edit, store and load code during runtime.
  - andybak 3y ago
    Oh, code? I assumed you meant geometry and/or materials. Yes, it's possible. I can think of several ways to approach it. Not quite as cleanly as with javaScript, mind.
    - hoc 3y ago
      Heh. What would be your favourite thoughts/combo here? Sorry for not being clear on the code part. I assumed USD and the like would be the norm now. "Complex objects" is not really helpful in this context, though.
      - andybak 3y ago
        USD is fairly widely used. But it's not "code" in the sense that I mean it. It's (mostly) declarative (like HTML) so I lump it in with obj, fbx and gltf. I am assuming code means "executable code" - I know the boundaries are fuzzy here and some file formats are Turing complete - but I guess what I'm saying is that I'm still not sure what you're asking!

fmajid 3y ago

It’s a low-level API. You’d typically use it under something like Aframe or Three.JS.

kevlened 3y ago

You can experience this on iPhone by installing Mozilla's WebXR Viewer [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webxr-viewer/id1295998056 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webxr-viewer/id1295998056], then opening the dinosaur demo [https://www.xrdinosaurs.com/ https://www.xrdinosaurs.com/]

dmarcos 3y ago
Important to mention. Team at Mozilla was affected by layoffs a couple of years back and the WebXR viewer is no longer maintained. Ships an old version of the WebXR API. Don’t recommend as dev target
ilaksh 3y ago
So Safari doesn't support the WebXR standard? Sometimes I really hope the AIs take over sooner rather than later.
- kfarr 3y ago
  Not yet but fingers crossed for the new apple headset driving more demand for such
  - techisneat 3y ago
    Crossing my fingers as well. Without this, it’s been a huge pain to develops what our startup needs right now.

eole666 3y ago

VR was really impressive a few years ago, it was running only on gaming computers with VR headsets. Now, with the quest 2 (far less powerfull than the gaming computers mentioned above) and web XR, it seems that developers are targeting mainly low end platforms, and so recent apps and games are rather less immersive than before mainly due to dated graphic quality, and lags when you play it on the quest (who has just a powerfull phone cpu/gpu, poor thing), or in a browser. I hope webgpu will changes that in the browser, and surely an other autonomous headset will arise with a cpu comparable to the apple M1/M2.

moron4hire 3y ago

I built a VR platform for a small, foreign language training services firm. WebXR made it possible for us to target the lowest-friction device available (Meta Quest 2) while also not having to slow our project velocity by having to submit updates for approval in the app store. People who say JS on the Quest 2 isn't fast enough to do good VR don't know what they are talking about. The problem is that a lot of small, indie developers only know the most naive way to implement things and then blame the platform for their lack of algorithms training. I had originally started the project in Unity 3D. I eventually rewrote everything in WebXR because--while the naive path in Unity was faster than WebXR--the ideal path in Unity was nearly impossible to implement. I haven't done anything in Unity for about 3 years now, so maybe it has changed, but basic things like decoding textures happen on the render thread, which makes it impossible to use the Unity happy path to implement a dynamic XR app that wasn't prone to making people puke. While I was still tilting at the Unity windmill, I had a large amount of code that was just dedicated to decoding images before using them as textures, tasks Unity should have been able to handle itself, except for the fact that Unity is built by people who have never had to make a game or app themselves before. There's a reason the loading screens on VR Chat are so long and boring--they can't slipstream live objects in because they haven't done the hard work of throwing away 90% of Unity's bullshit framework code. So they have to hide the dropped frames behind a scene fade-in/fade-out. With WebXR, you get the full browser ecosystem to work with. Web Workers. Web Audio being off-render-thread by default. Fetch API. IndexedDB. It's somewhat popular to complain about Web APIs because some of them have some weird quirks and most of them don't agree on how to design an API, but you have no idea how much worse it can get. If you think browser app development is bad, trying making an app in Unity sometime.

ghostwreck 3y ago

I love the open web and want solutions like this to win but 3D experiences built on the web seem to fall flat. Any AAA games on the web? How far is state of art native desktop 3D vs 3D through the web? Add on XR (IMU, camera, geo-tracking, AI processing) and it falls even further. It would be interesting to see some side-by-side comparisons.

dmarcos 3y ago
Don’t have precise answers to your questions but let me reframe. AAA games that pushes HW to the limit is a small fraction of all content. Among most popular content on Quest you have VR Chat, Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Job Simulator: Indie titles def not AAA that the browser would be more than capable to deliver today. https://moonrider.xyz/ https://moonrider.xyz/ for example has 60-100k VR MAUs (300k at peak on Holyday season 2021). Tech is no longer a blocker to build good WebXR content and grow an audience. Mozilla, Google and now the Meta Browser team have done excellent work to get us here

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zmmmmm 3y ago

It's going to be really interesting to see if Apple's headset will support WebXR. If so it will probably be the only way to get open VR/AR content on there and could drive a huge expansion in its use. Which would be a great thing because it's much nicer to work with (from my admittedly, very meagre experience) than having to build things in Unity etc.

rchaud 3y ago
It won't, for the same reasons that web apps weren't allowed on the App Store 15 years ago.
- marcellus23 3y ago
  What does the App Store have to do with it? Apple supported adding web apps to the Home Screen from the very first iPhone OS.
- cvan 3y ago
  On iOS, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Experimental Features. (Or on macOS desktop, from the Develop menu.) Scroll to the bottom of the list. There are 4 WebXR APIs behind a flag. Why waste precious WebKit resources on implementing WebXR APIs in Apple's browser engine… if WebXR will hypothetically never be shipped to Safari stable?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dmarcos 3y ago
Eventually but unlikely in the short term. Web APIs commoditize platform and hardware features. Browser content doesn’t contribute to user lock-in and takes away from exclusive apps where Apple generates revenue. We’ll probably see WebXR when hardware is effectively a commodity because competition has caught up.