Mozilla is shutting down its made-for-VR web browser, Firefox Reality, and handing off the project to third-party team Igalia.
Mozilla launched Firefox Reality back in 2018 on a host of early standalones, including Oculus Go, Lenovo Mirage Solo, and Vive Focus. In the following years, Mozilla also brought it to Quest and PC VR headsets.
Firefox Reality is set to be removed from app stores within the coming weeks, Mozilla says in a blog post, with the newly announced Igalia Wolvic taking its place starting as soon as next week.
Wolvic is based on Firefox Reality’s source code, which includes the same native support for WebXR content and privacy/security that Mozilla has touted in the past with Firefox on other platforms.
Igalia says in a blog post that its first focus is on serving Android-based, standalone XR systems and HarmonyOS tethered systems, which includes Meta Quest, Huawei VR Glass, HTC Vive Focus, Pico Interactive, and Lynx. The company says its also hoping to support Qualcomm and Lenovo XR devices in the future.
“The Firefox Reality project was created […] to give users some choice and ensure that open and unlimited access to the web remains strong on these devices,” said Brian Kardell, Developer Advocate at Igalia. “These ideas are core to what we do at Igalia, so we’re thrilled to be able to carry the torch forward in leveraging that work to create a new browser, Wolvic. Together, we will help to ensure that the web ecosystem remains healthy.”
Igalia is consultancy studio based in Spain that’s focused on maintaining and promoting Free Software. The team says its developing via this GitHub repository, asking for help from the community to file any issues there that may arise.
The Firefox Reality browser project is being continued by an ‘open source consultancy’ as Wolvic.
Firefox Reality is a web browser for standalone VR and AR headsets, a project of the XR division of Mozilla Labs. It first launched on Oculus Go’s store in 2018. In 2019 it launched on Quest and HoloLens 2, and was built-in to HTC Vive Focus. But just a year later in 2020, Mozilla laid off 250 employees including staff working on Firefox Reality.
‘Open source software consultancy’ Igalia says it took over stewardship of Firefox Reality, and is now calling it Wolvic – with a beta release coming next week. It describes Wolvic as “a new branch of the evolutionary tree of the Firefox Reality Browser”. Former Mozilla Labs engineer Imanol Fernandez is among the staff now at Igalia working on the project.
While Firefox Reality is still available on Quest, Go, HoloLens 2, HTC, and Pico devices it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. Igalia says with Wolvic it will give the browser “new investment, updates and nurturing”.
Like Quest’s built in Oculus Browser, Wolvic supports WebXR content, meaning you can use it to enter immersive web experiences and 360 degree videos. It features a Privacy Mode, voice Search, Movie Mode, tab resizing, and Igalia plans to continue to add new features.
A beta will launch next week on Quest and Huawei VR Glass, with support for HTC Vive Focus, Pico Neo, and Lynx planned for future.
The organization behind the Firefox Web browser as well as a series of XR-related projects, including the Mozilla Hubs Web-based social networking work, laid off a significant number of people in a restructuring effort.
Approximately 250 people will lose their jobs and another 60 will be reassigned, according to communications shared by Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation Chairwoman Mitchell Baker.
The communications suggest there might still be life for the group’s work with Hubs — an innovative social networking effort that used Web-based technologies to create VR spaces you could join with a link from a wide range of devices. Exactly what the Hubs effort might look like after the restructuring remains unclear. A message sent to employees states Mozilla is “organizing a new product organization outside of Firefox that will both ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams. Our initial investments will be Pocket, Hubs, VPN, Web Assembly and security and privacy products.”
A message sent by the Mozilla Hubs Twitter account added “we’re still learning how Hubs will be impacted with the restructuring. . .and we hope to have more information to share about what this means for Hubs and Hubs Cloud soon.”
Today's news was difficult and we're still learning how Hubs will be impacted with the restructuring. Hubs was listed among the projects that will be part of the new portfolio work and we hope to have more information to share about what this means for Hubs and Hubs Cloud soon.
Baker’s communications said that those losing their jobs would receive severance “at least equivalent to full base pay through December 31, 2020”.
“Our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included a great deal of change already: building a better internet by creating new kinds of value in Firefox; investing in innovation and creating new products; and adjusting our finances to ensure stability over the long term.,” Baker explained. “Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue. As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer workable.”
Recently, Mozilla unveiled ‘Hello WebXR’, a demo designed to show that WebXR is a viable alternative to store apps. We tried it out, and found it certainly makes a convincing case.
The Mozilla Foundation is a not-for-profit organization which seeks to advance the open web. It develops and maintains the open source Firefox web browser, including the mobile VR version Firefox Reality (available on Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, Vive Focus, Lenovo Mirage Solo, and almost all other standalone headsets).
WebXR is an open standard application programming interface (API) which enables 3D webpages to display on VR headsets and be interacted with by VR controllers. WebXR experiences are rendered with WebGL, usually with an engine like three.js.
Impressions Of This Demo
Hello WebXR contains a large hall as well as three portal doors which bring you to other mini-experiences. Locomotion is handled by a simple teleport system in which you point your handed controller and press the trigger.
The experience uses controller models rather than hands, and the controllers are generic rather than tailored to the headset you’re using. Mozilla mentions that they plan to use WebXR Input profiles in the future, which may solve this problem.
The first thing that stood out, and thus the first thing I tried, was the xylophone in the center. Using the triggers each stick can be picked up to play the keys. The interactions feel smooth and solid, other than the lack of haptics.
Also in the center of this hall are spheres which, when selected, immerse you in a 360 degree photo, similar to the user experience of Valve’s The Lab. Each loads instantly, demonstrating how WebXR can be easily used to distribute this kind of content.
But what about bringing the regular web into the VR web? Mozilla demonstrates this with a “Twitter Feed” screen, which shows Tweets that use the #helloWebXR hashtag. This is where WebXR shines, developers can more easily integrate the wealth of APIs and frameworks that already exist for the web ecosystem.
Current VR headsets have limited resolution, and the lack of variable focus means you don’t want to get extremely close to things. So how can VR be used to show detailed paintings or other works of art? Mozilla’s solution is a magnifying glass, and it feels entirely intuitive and natural to use.
One of the three rooms you can teleport to is the “dark room”, which lets you hear positional sounds (crucial for VR audio). This is probably powered by Resonance Audio. The positioning was relatively precise, but not quite as pinpoint as I’m used to with Oculus Audio or Steam Audio.
Another of the rooms was incredibly impressive — a classical sculpture captured using photogrammetry. Even on the mobile headset, this essentially looked photorealistic. This was not something I expected from a web page, especially not one that loaded instantly.
The experience also performs excellently on the Oculus Quest standalone headset. Quest uses a smartphone processor with limited power, so it is notable to see it handle all of this so smoothly.
When we tried WebVR in the past, even on PC, performance was mixed. Hello WebXR seemed to maintain a constant 72 FPS, with the exception of the graffiti wall, where the framerate was significantly lower.
The Potential Of A VR Web
Oculus Quest is a semi-closed platform, with a heavily curated store. Facebook will only allow apps that meet its strict standards on quality and value to be distributed through its store.
Even on the more open stores for PC VR content still requires a basic approval process, and sometimes fees (Steam charges $100, for example). Developers are reliant on each store to distribute to a large number of users. While executables can be distributed through the web, this is a fairly major security risk.
WebXR makes the argument that just like websites, no central authority (other than government in case of law violation) should control VR content. And because browsers keep web code in a sandbox, there shouldn’t be any security risks.
The SideQuest project aims to offer an alternative route to distribution on Oculus Quest, but this requires connecting your headset to a PC and apps still have to be downloaded and installed. WebXR enables content to be delivered near instantaneously directly from the headset from a simple web URL.
A problem that arises, however, is monetization. This is more necessary on the web than through a store since each developer would be hosting their own app. While web hosting and bandwidth has never been cheaper than today, it is still a recurring cost. And of course, developers may build WebXR apps as deserving of a price as store apps.
The Oculus Store within Quest allows the user to enter a simple PIN code to use the payment method on their account. Would users really grab their debit card and awkwardly enter their details while the headset is half on their head? Probably not. But the open standard Payment Request API (which Facebook is contributing to) seeks to solve this kind of problem on the web, so in the future we might see payments passed through to the Oculus Browser.
How To Try It
You can access Hello WebXR on Quest via Oculus Browser — just Google Search ‘Hello WebXR’ inside it.
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Mozilla announced at CES this week that it’s bringing Firefox Reality, its VR web browser, to Pico headsets soon.
Launched in late 2018, Firefox Reality is a made-for-VR web browser that includes the ability to sync your Firefox Account, send tabs, sync history and bookmarks, and easily browse a curated selection of WebVR content.
Along with Firefox Reality comes Mozilla Hubs, the web-based social VR platform, both of which are said to arrive on all Pico headsets sometime in Q1 2020.
Hubs allows users to simply follow a hyperlink to quickly collaborate in a customized virtual space, replete with the ability to upload 3D assets, chat in VR, and share documents and photos. The web-based, low-poly social space is accessible to both VR headsets and desktop web browsers, making it potential tool for businesses looking for a quick way to shift in-person meetings from the physical to the virtual.
It seems with the upcoming release Mozilla is making a continued effort to widen its reach into the standalone headset segment, as it most recently brought Firefox Reality to Oculus Quest last summer. Firefox Reality already supports Oculus Go, HTC Vive Focus, and Google Daydream headsets, so its continued push to support newer headsets is a good sign of the overall health of the project. At the time of this writing Firefox Reality has yet to launch on Steam for PC VR headsets as it was previously announced in April 2019.
The announcement was timed with Pico’s unveiling of the 6DOF standalones Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye on Monday. Like its name suggests, Neo 2 Eye includes integrated eye-tracking, so it will be interesting to see whether Mozilla will be accommodating that functionality into both the web browser itself as well as Hubs.
Today at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain Mozilla announced a collaboration with Microsoft to bring the Firefox Reality web browser to the recently revealed Microsoft HoloLens 2.
While Mozilla hasn’t mentioned a release date yet, the company says they’re currently working with community developers of the programming language Rust to bring “the language and runtime that enable us to deliver a more secure experience to the HoloLens platforms.”
Mozilla says they’ll build on previous efforts—namely their work on the developer build Firefox browser for Magic Leap One—and then bring their web platform Mozilla Servo to HoloLens 2 when it is available this summer.
Image courtesy Mozilla
Much like Apple’s WebKit for Safari,Servo is an open source browser engine that will form the foundation of the company’s next generation WebXR Firefox Reality web browser.
First announced back in April 2018, Mozilla developed Firefox Realityto be a cross-platform, open sourced web browser not only capable of delivering VR/AR headset-users standard web pages, but also immersive games, videos, environments, and experiences from around the web.
At the time of this writing, Firefox for Magic Leap One currently only offers support for standard 2D web pages, so there’s undoubtedly still work to be done before a firm release date can be set for ‘the full Firefox XR experience’ on HoloLens 2, which would necessarily include the burgeoning 3D web as well.
“Building on Microsoft’s years of experience with the current HoloLens among enterprises and consumers, we will work together to learn from developers and users about bringing AR content to the web,” says Lars Bergstrom, director of engineering at Mozilla’s mixed reality program.
Mozilla says they’re continuing their focus with Firefox Reality to deliver a “safe, private experience with open, accessible technology.”
The company will be detailing new builds of Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2 via their blog. Interested developers can also get involved in Mozilla projects by taking part in the company’s Servo Starters program.
Mozilla announced that its Firefox Reality VR browser will be the default browser on all HTC Vive headsets.
The internet company first unveiled the Firefox Reality VR browser last April, touting it as an easier way for manufacturers to integrate and adapt a browser into their headsets. At its launch in September, Firefox Reality was available for Oculus Go, Daydream, and HTC headsets via the Viveport store. Moving forward, it will be the default system browser for all Vive VR headsets.
The announcement coincided with a bunch of HTC VR announcements at CES in Las Vegas, including a new native eye-tracking toolset for the Vive Pro platform; a new subscription-based VR app service called Viveport Infinity; and a new standalone headset called Vive Cosmos.
Today’s news also comes a few months after Mozilla expanded Firefox Reality support beyond English and into seven new languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, and Korean.
While all the main VR headset makers already offer their own browsers, Mozilla is clearly pushing itself as the cross-platform standard in VR web browsing — becoming the default browser on HTC Vive headsets is a notable step in advancing Mozilla’s ambitions for Firefox in the burgeoning VR arena.
“Virtual reality is one example of how web browsing is evolving beyond our desktop and mobile screens,” noted Mozilla’s chief R&D officer Sean White. “Here at Mozilla, we are working hard to ensure these new platforms can deliver browsing experiences that provide users with the level of privacy, ease-of-use, and control that they have come to expect from Firefox.”
Mozilla has announced the first major update for Firefox Reality, its open source cross-platform browser for AR and VR headsets, ushering in support for 7 new languages in addition to a handful of other new features.
By way of a brief recap, Mozilla first unveiled Firefox Reality in April, pitching it as an easier way for manufacturers not only to integrate a browser into their headsets, but adapt it to suit their needs. At launch Firefox Reality supported the HTC Vive Focus and HTC Vive Wave platforms, but was later offered as a download for HTC Viveport, Oculus Go, and Daydream.
Thus far, Firefox Reality has supported English only, but with version 1.1 of the browser it will also cater to French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, and Korean.
Thus far, Firefox Reality has supported English only, but with version 1.1 of the browser it will also cater to French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, and Korean.
Above: Firefox Reality: Choose your language
Additionally, Firefox Reality will now support voice search in these seven languages too, while it also sports an upgraded theater viewing mode that works with 360-degree videos.
Above: Firefox Reality: Voice search
Elsewhere, the new Firefox Reality browser now also offers search suggestions in the URL bar, and it supports bookmarking.
While most of the main headset manufacturers already offer their own browsers, Firefox Reality may be appealing to some users for cross-platform syncing, meaning they can access the same bookmarks and browsing history inside their Oculus Go as they do on their phone or laptop. For now, the bookmarking functionality inside Firefox Reality is limited to saving and viewing locally; however, Mozilla said that cross-device syncing will be arriving soon.
Above: Firefox Reality: Bookmarking
Growing market
The global AR and VR markets are estimated to be a $18 billion industry this year, according to IDC — around double the figure of 2017 — and this could rise to as much as $100 billion by 2023.
We’re seeing significant investment and resources expended on next-gen devices spanning VR, AR, and mixed reality. Amazon-backed North recently launched $999 Alexa-powered holographic glasses, and Acer introduced a detachable OJO 500 Windows Mixed Reality headset with built-in speakers. Elsewhere, Finnish startup Varjo raised $31 million for a industrial VR headset with human-eye resolution, while Mojo Vision launched its “invisible computing” AR platform out of stealth with more than $50 million in funding.
And that is the environment that Mozilla is trying to adapt Firefox to. The platforms of the future are leaning heavily toward VR, AR, and mixed reality, with “voice” playing a pivotal part of the interface interactions.
In the future, Mozilla said that it’s looking into supporting content-sharing across browsers, multiple windows and tabs, and other features that you’ll no doubt be familiar with from Firefox on other platforms.
Firefox Reality 1.1 is rolling out for Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream headsets.
In September web browser developer Mozilla launched its dedicated virtual reality (VR) browser to facilitate seamless movement between the 2D web and the immersive web, Firefox Reality. Today, the company has announced the first major update to the app, adding new features whilst improving others.
With the release of Firefox Reality 1.1 new features included are 360 video support with a new dedicated theatre viewing mode, additional language support in the form of Chinese (Mandarin – simplified and traditional), French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean, plus expanded voice search support to the new localised languages.
Local bookmarks have also been added (cross-device syncing is coming soon) alongside automatic search and domain suggestions in URL bar. The 2D UI performance has been improved as well.
In an expansion to the Firefox Reality content feed, Mozilla has added cult director/designer Keiichi Matsuda’s video series, including his latest creation, Merger.
“Keiichi’s work explores how emerging technology will impact our future lives,” a press statement explains. “His earlier video HYPER-REALITY presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. His new film Merger is about the future of work. Set against the backdrop of AI-run corporations, a woman finds herself caught between virtual and physical reality, human and machine. As she fights for her economic survival, she finds herself immersed in the cult of productivity, in search of the ultimate interface. This short film documents her last 4 minutes on earth.”
Firefox Reality 1.1 is now available for download in the Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores, supporting Vive Wave devices, Oculus Go and Google Daydream View respectively. You’ll find the full release notes on Github, and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.
