Category: Mozilla

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Firefox Reality VR Browser Hit Quest, Adds Tracking Data Protection

Mozilla finally brought its popular VR browser, Firefox Reality, the Oculus Quest this week.

Firefox Reality is an entirely VR-native browser available to download for free. It allows you to visit your usual websites in a virtual window whilst also taking advantage of VR-specific features like 360 videos and WebVR support. Better yet, you can use Mozilla Hubs to meet up and hang out with people in VR. Think of it as Mozilla’s first shot at establishing a virtual metaverse.

This is the third 6DOF standalone headset Firefox Reality has launched on. In fact, HTC is even making the platform its default browser for its headsets going forward. Oculus has its own browser appearing across its various headsets too.

That’s not all though. Firefox Reality also recently introduced a data-blocking system called Enhanced Tracking Protection. This is designed to protect data about your behavior in VR from sites and apps that might record it. VR’s reliance on head and hand tracking presents interesting new issues for the era of data surveillance. Download Firefox Reality in Quest and the Tracking Protection will be in place by default. It will be interesting to see if others follow in Mozilla’s footsteps on this front.

Coming up, Mozilla is also prepping multi-window browsing, bookmarks syncing and additional language support for the browser. It’s also set to introduce ‘nearly VR-ready’ WebXR support. Basically the company is building the browser for AR devices too. The company is certainly getting all of its bases covered for the spatial computing future.

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VR Browser Firefox Reality now Supports Oculus Quest

Ever since the launch of Firefox Reality by Mozilla last year the company has been gradually scaling up the project by adding new features and support of devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens 2. Two of Oculus’ headsets support the virtual reality (VR) browser, Oculus Go and Gear VR, and today a third has been added to that list, Oculus Quest.

Firefox Reality

The Firefox Reality VR web browsing experience has been tailored to Oculus Quest’s performance capabilities so that you can use its 6 degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) control for anything on the app, whether that’s watching an immersive video or meeting up with friends in Mozilla Hubs.

Firefox Reality has a range of features such as Enhanced Tracking Protection which blocks sites from tracking you, collecting personal data for ad networks and tech companies. The option is enabled by default with Janice Von Itter, Staff Program Manager at Mozilla saying in a blog post: “We strongly believe privacy shouldn’t be relegated to optional settings. As an added bonus, these protections work in the background and actually increase the speed of the browser.”

And to make sure Firefox Reality can be enjoyed by as many people as possible the app currently supports 10 different languages, including Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Wider language support is on the way, plus Firefox Reality can be voice-controlled to search the web instead of typing, generally making the process faster and easier.

Firefox Reality

There’s also more on the way. In 2019 Mozilla plans on rolling out support for the WebXR specification, multi-window browsing, bookmarks sync and SteamVR. The latter was announced back in April, which would allow any headset compatible with SteamVR to use the app, such as Oculus Rift/ Rift S, HTC Vive and Valve Index. This addition is expected this summer.

This week has seen several other updates for Oculus Quest including Oculus Venues and improved tracking accuracy for the Oculus Touch controllers.

Firefox Reality is available for free via Oculus Store for Oculus Quest, Oculus Go and Gear VR; Viveport for HTC Vive Focus and the Google Store for Daydream View. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Firefox Reality, reporting back with Mozilla’s latest updates.

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VR Web Browser Firefox Reality is Coming to SteamVR

Being able to view the internet entirely in virtual reality (VR) is one of the next big steps to make the technology more widely accepted. Mozilla is pushing this initiative forward with its Firefox Reality browser. Today, as part of the announcements around Valve Index, Mozilla has confirmed it’s working on a version compatible with SteamVR.

Firefox Reality

Mozilla has been working with Valve to bring Firefox Reality to the platform, which would allow any headset compatible with SteamVR – including Valve Index – to be able to use the immersive browser. It’s not available just yet, however, in the next few months SteamVR users will be able to install Firefox Reality via a new web dashboard button, launching a browser window over any OpenVR experience.

“With a few simple clicks, users will be able to access web content such as tips or guides or stream a Twitch comment channel without having to exit their immersive experiences,” says Andre Vrignaud, Head of Mixed Reality Strategy in a statement. “In addition, users will be able to log into their Firefox account once, and access synced bookmarks and cookies across both Firefox and Firefox Reality — no need to log in twice!”

Adding SteamVR support should allow Firefox Reality to reach more users and further improve its headset compatibility. The browser is already compatible with headsets such as Vive Wave devices, Oculus Go and Google Daydream View, as well as an early developer preview for Magic Leap One. Back in February during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 event in Spain, Mozilla revealed a collaboration with Microsoft to bring Firefox Reality to the new HoloLens 2.

Firefox Reality header

Firefox Reality saw a public release in September 2018 as a means to deliver 3D web and immersive content to VR headset users, updated in the following months to include 360-degree video support as well as additional languages. Firefox Reality also happens to be the default web browser across HTC Vive’s entire range of headsets.

Valve and Mozilla plan on releasing Firefox Reality for SteamVR this summer. It can be Wishlisted on the Steam store, and when further details are released VRFocus will let you know.

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Mozilla’s Web-Based VR Platform Hubs Adds Discord Support

Mozilla has been making great strides when it comes to virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) support, such as ensuring Firefox Reality will work with HoloLens 2. Last year the company released an experimental browser-based social platform called Hubs, where users could create rooms and share content. Today, Mozilla has revealed integration plans with popular community platform Discord.

Mozilla Hubs

Discord is a voice and chat platform commonly used by the gaming and technology communities online. In recent years more and more developers use it to connect with players, post updates and use it as a portal so gamers can beta test titles. Quite often you’ll find links in VRFocus articles to Discord.

“The Hubs Discord integration allows members to use their Discord identity to connect to rooms and connects a Discord channel with a specific Hubs room in order to capture the text chat, photos taken, and media shared between users in each space,” explains Liv Erickson, Senior Product Manager & Greg Fodor, Engineering Manager, Hubs on the Mozilla Blog. “With the ability to add web content to rooms in Hubs, users who are co-present together are able to collaborate and entertain one another, watch videos, chat, share their screen / webcam feed, and pull in 3D objects from Sketchfab and Google Poly. Users will be able to chat in the linked Discord channel to send messages, see the media added to the connected Hubs room, and easily get updates on who has joined or left at any given time.”

As is quite common for Mozilla, Hubs is fully open source and free to try as the company continues to push WebVR. Because of this, Hubs will work with pretty much any VR headset, simply log into the browser. To try the Discord integration you’ll need to sign up to the beta here. And don’t forget to check out the public Hubs Community Discord server for continual info.

As for future plans, the Hubs team plan to introduce additional platform integrations and new tools related to room management, authentication, and identity. Hubs can be used without a persistent identity or login but having a Hubs account or using your Discord identity will allow access to an increased feature set. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

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Mozilla’s Firefox Reality Browser Will Natively Support HoloLens 2

Tomorrow sees the start of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 event in Barcelona, Spain. Today, Microsoft kicked things off with a bang officially announcing at its pre-show press conference the next generation HoloLens 2 mixed reality (MR) headset, which it previously teased a few weeks ago. To add to the announcement, Mozilla has just revealed a collaboration with Microsoft to bring Firefox Reality to the new headset.

Microsoft HoloLens 2Using Firefox Reality the company is aiming to open up WebVR to multiple platforms, with support already available for virtual reality (VR) headsets such as Vive Wave devices, Oculus Go and Google Daydream View, as well as an early developer preview for Magic Leap One. The version for HoloLens 2 is currently a prototype at the moment.

Via Mozilla’s Mixed Reality programme developers can ensure that users have a safe, private experience with open, accessible technology thanks to a focus on making the best browsers, services, and tools available.

“In the coming months, we will be working with the Rust community to bring the language and runtime that enable us to deliver a more secure experience to the HoloLens platforms,” said Lars Bergstrom, Director of Engineering for Mixed Reality at Mozilla in a statement. “And we will then build on our previous work on AR headsets to bring our next generation web platform, Servo, to the HoloLens 2 when it is available this summer.”

Mozilla Firefox Reality

Mozilla only launched Firefox Reality in September last year as a means to deliver 3D web and immersive content to VR headset users, using the same Quantum engine that the latest version of desktop Firefox is using. Since then the browser has been updated to include 360-degree video support as well as additional languages. Mozilla has also collaborated with HTC Vive, making Firefox Reality the default web browser across the headset manufacturers entire product range.

How Firefox Reality will differ on an MR headset rather than a VR headset has yet to be showcased. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Mozilla’s Firefox Reality and Microsoft HoloLens 2, reporting back with the latest announcements.

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Mozilla Announces ‘Firefox Reality’ AR Web Browser for Hololens 2

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 Reality to 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.

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3 Impressive WebVR Examples Worth Checking Out With Firefox's New Support for Vive and Rift

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.

The post Mozilla Announces ‘Firefox Reality’ AR Web Browser for Hololens 2 appeared first on Road to VR.

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Glitch And Mozilla Launch WebVR Starter Kit For Building VR Websites

Glitch And Mozilla Launch WebVR Starter Kit For Building VR Websites

Virtual reality experiences have historically been islands — unconnected apps and videos, sometimes platform-specific — but the past year has seen efforts to tie them together using device-agnostic tools and portals. Mozilla’s vision has been to leverage the web and browsers for VR, and now it’s launching a free WebVR “starter kit” developed with web and app development community Glitch.

Their kit is a five-part video course accompanied by interactive code examples, designed to help developers learn to use A-Frame, a free WebVR development framework. A-Frame creates VR content that can be viewed on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Google Daydream, and Gear VR headsets, as well as desktop and laptop PCs, including everything from complex 3D animated objects to 360-degree panoramas.

“Our hope is that this starter kit will encourage anyone who has been on the fence about creating virtual reality experiences to dive in and get started,” Mozilla explained in a blog post today. To that end, interactive code examples are presented on Glitch’s site alongside step-by-step instructions and a viewing window, enabling developers to see how a “remix” of the code changes the VR output.  One example lets you play with textured planets from our solar system, adding and editing spheres using simple HTML code.

Glitch’s Intro to WebVR is free and available now. Additional examples of A-Frame WebVR apps can be seen here.

This post by Jeremy Horwitz originally appeared on VentureBeat. 

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HTC Vive, Amazon & Mozilla Take VR Web Integration to the Next Level

One of the important factors when helping virtual reality (VR) go mainstream is its ability to browse the web. Being online and navigating the digital world has become part of everyday life for billions of people around the world, so it makes sense that being in VR shouldn’t hinder that ability. It’s only recently that browsing the web in VR has ventured away from viewing your normal monitor through a headset, and now HTC Vive wants to push that even further by announcing several new collaborations.

Mozilla Firefox Reality

The first collaboration is with Mozilla, with HTC Vive announcing that Firefox Reality will now become the default web browser across the product range, including Vive Pro and the upcoming Vive Cosmos.

Intertwined with HTC Vive and Mozilla is Amazon Sumerian, enabling HTC Vive developers to concept, test and publish VR-optimized websites, without requiring specialized programming experience.

“We’ve set out this year to bring everyday computing tasks into VR for the first time,” said Michael Almeraris, Vice President of Partnerships and Content, HTC VIVE in a statement. “Through the collaboration with Mozilla and Amazon Web Services, we’re closing the gap in XR computing, empowering Vive users to get more content in their headset, while enabling developers and businesses to quickly create content for these consumers.”

HTC Vive Cosmos

“Many industries are adopting XR technologies for a wide range of uses, including training simulations, virtual concierge services, enhanced online shopping experiences, virtual tours, and more,” said Kyle Roche, General Manager, Amazon Sumerian, AWS. “Until now, creating realistic XR experiences required developers to have specialized programming skills and learn unique specifications and deployment procedures, adding complexity to the process. Together with HTC and Mozilla, we’re making it easier for developers to more quickly build and distribute VR applications using nothing more than a browser and a URL.”

To help showcase both of these partnerships, Fidelity Investments has created a prototype VR website designed to allow financial customers to immerse themselves in their investments using data visualization tools, being displayed at HTC Vive’s CES Showcase.

As furthers developments from the partnerships are announced, VRFocus will let you know.

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Mozilla Releases Developer Build Browser for Magic Leap One

Mozilla has just released an early developer preview of a web browser for the Magic Leap One AR headset.

The browser is built on Mozilla’s Servo engine technology, the company’s high-performance browser engine designed for both application and embedded use.

Magic Leap One already boasts its own native browser called Helio, which serves up both the 2D and 3D web. Magic Leap bills Helio as “the web as it should be: liberated from the confines of flat browsers.”

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Magic Leap is Offering Individual Developers up to $500K for Their AR Projects

Mozilla announced the browser in a blog post, and say they’re only offering support for basic 2D pages at this time. The company hopes to eventually bring the “full Firefox browser experience” sometime in 2019 after working with their partners and community.

If you own a Magic Leap One, the $2,300 developer-focused standalone AR headset, you can download and try out the builds, provide feedback, and get involved in the community.

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Firefox Reality VR Browser Gets Support For 7 New Languages, Bookmarking, And More

Firefox Reality VR Browser Gets Support For 7 New Languages, Bookmarking, And More

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.

This post by Paul Sawers originally appeared on VentureBeat.

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