Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, shuttered most of its web-focused XR development back in 2020. At the time, the company’s web-based social VR app Hubs was spared from the chopping block. Now, after a new organization-wide restructuring, all development on Hubs is set to be wound down in May.
Launched in 2018, Hubs is an XR chatroom that runs directly in a browser, giving both VR headset users and standard monitor and smartphone users a place to connect. It’s an impressive ‘no-install-required’ WebXR social app that never gained the sort of traction that better-backed apps garnered over the years, such as Rec Room, VRChat, or Meta’s Horizon Worlds.
The team responsible for Hubs recently announced its shutdown in a blog post, stating that its last day under Mozilla will be on May 31st, 2024. This includes shutdown of Hubs‘ demo server, managed subscription, and community resources.
The team aims to provide a multi-month transition period leading up to shutdown of those services, starting with disabling new subscriptions on March 1st, and concluding all work on Hubs by May 31st. A tool to download user data will be released on April 1st, the company says.
While this means Mozilla won’t be continuing active development or maintenance of Hubs codebases and community resources post-shutdown, since Hubs‘ code is open source, anyone can continue independent development. The company emphasizes that its so-called ‘Community Edition’ of Hubs can run on any platform that supports Kubernetes, which includes a majority of cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
A new app called Brushwork VR offers a way for users to simulate painting on a canvas in VR with any headset that supports immersive WebXR browser experiences.
The experience can be launched from your headset at BrushworkVR.com and should work on any WebXR-support headset browser, including Quest 2 and many PC VR headsets. It’s entirely free to use, quite comprehensive and offers a fair amount of customization and options.
In terms of canvases and paint brushes, there’s a variety of sizes of both to choose from. As you would hope, the paint from the brush seems to react fairly realistically when dragged along the canvas. You can pick up and hold brushes at any angle, and put them into two modes — one adds a new layer of paint on top and another allows you to mix between colors. You’re equipped with a palette to your left, which you can use to mix colors together and find the exact right shade to go onto the canvas.
Your paintings can be saved and resumed later on, as well as shared with others via a code that can be entered into the Brushwork VR website. You can also upload a reference image via the website when on the same network as your headset, which will be loaded into the app for you take work alongside.
The developers at Sunset Division say that more than 25,000 paintings have been completed using the app since launch 2 months ago. More recently, the developers say that they’re seeing people working on more than 1,000 paintings a day.
A newly released update for the Oculus Browser on Quest includes full-finger hand-tracking support for WebXR projects.
The feature was quietly released in the recent 10.2 build of Oculus Browser, which now comes with a hand-tracking API and timewarp layer support, both of which are considered ‘experimental’ at this time.
The 8.0 version of Oculus Browser released back in February was the first to include initial hand-tracking support for WebXR projects, although it was focused on controller emulation and not true five-finger tracking.
Oculus Browser Product Manager Jacob Rossi announced the news via Twitter, providing some examples via a WebXR test page and layer page which demonstrates hand-tracking and timewarp layer support respectively.
Check out a demo in the familiar WebXR solar system scene featuring the new hand-tracking support:
Hand-tracking came to Oculus Quest as an experimental feature back in late 2019. The intuitive control scheme has since come out of beta and is now available for all Quest owners to use system-wide, letting you control the basic functions of Quest without the need of Touch controllers.
Moreover, there are an increasing number of games and cool experimentations that make use of Quest’s native hand-tracking abilities. We’re hoping to see more soon using the full five-fingered hand-tracking support on Quest.
As for timewarp support, just like on non-WebXR-based apps timewarp support allows the headset to reproject past frames when the scene can’t maintain its native refresh rate, which in Quest’s case is 72Hz.
As excitement builds for the consumer release of Nreal’s Light augmented reality glasses this fall, the company is continuing to entice developers to support the affordable, Android-based wearable. Today, Nreal announced two important upgrades to its Light software development kit — multi-user environments and WebXR support — as well as a couple of deals that will likely bring new developers into the stable.
If you’re not yet familiar with Nreal Light, here’s a quick recap: Unlike Microsoft and Magic Leap, which developed $2,300 to $3,500 enterprise AR headsets with their own computing platforms, Nreal created lightweight $500 glasses that use Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, 855, or 865 smartphones for processing, storage, and wireless network connectivity. Currently available as an $1,119 Development Kit, Light has already been embraced by multiple cellular carriers and XR collaborative workspace developer Spatial, thanks to the headset’s ability to facilitate next-generation remote work, remote assistance, and entertainment. An all-in-one enterprise model is planned for release in the last quarter of this year, directly challenging Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 and the troubled Magic Leap One.
Starting today, users of the Light Development Kit will be able to access “multiplayer” mode, a feature that lets multiple headset wearers see and interact with one another inside a shared mixed reality environment. Business users will be able to share digital collaborative workspaces and meeting rooms using the feature, while developers will also be able to develop multi-person cooperative or competitive games. To facilitate multiplayer mode testing, Nreal is offering a bundle with two Light headsets and a $500 magnetic prescription lens set for $2,559, a 14% discount off their separately purchased prices.
On May 28, Nreal and Deutsche Telekom’s tech incubator Hubraum will globally launch a Mixed Reality Program partnership to find, accelerate, and release new mixed reality apps for Nreal Light. The partners will focus on productivity and entertainment apps, with plans to either include or feature the apps during Light’s consumer launch. Additionally, developers interested in learning how to create Nreal-compatible apps will get access to Nreal Tower, a tower defense-style sample game, as well as a Slack channel to co-build the game with the Nreal team. A finished version of Tower will become generally available along with the Light Consumer Kit.
Last, but not least, Nreal says it’s adding WebXR support to the Light platform, enabling web applications to properly display content through the stereoscopic 3D glasses. WebXR apps effectively allow developers to offer their mixed reality content over the web in a platform-agnostic format that doesn’t require Google, Apple, Microsoft, or another company to serve as a gatekeeper. These apps will apparently be accessible through the Nebula 3D launcher Nreal developed for Android phones, following an SDK update coming “later this year.”
The written content of this post by Jeremy Horowitz originally appeared on VentureBeat.
While we’ve talked plenty about the power of WebXR—a standard which makes it possible to deliver VR experiences directly from web browsers—there hasn’t been a centralized destination to discover WebXR apps as users would expect from other content platforms. XR Swim is a new portal that aims to deliver just that.
Though one major point of WebXR is expressly to offer a way for developers to distribute VR apps easily without being stuck inside a walled platform, such platform storefronts have emerged as a key meeting point for developers making apps and customers who want them. Storefronts like those from Oculus and Steam serve to organize content so that consumers can browse heaps of content from a single, centralized location.
While some truly impressive WebXR apps already exist today, they can be extremely difficult to discover because they are literally a webpage among billions connected to the internet. If you don’t already know the name of what you’re looking for, there’s hardly a way to Google search for WebXR applications specifically.
That’s where XR Swim comes in. Smartly based in the browser itself (and with an easy to memorize URL, xrswim.com) the site is a centralized portal for finding WebXR experiences—it even has its own WebXR component which means you can browse and launch WebXR experiences in or out of VR.
XR Swim looks very similar to the kind of storefront you’d expect for finding apps from the VR platforms like Oculus and Steam, though it’s missing some expected features at the moment like the ability to leave reviews for content and a way for developers to accept payment.
More features are in the works though. As our friends at VRScout report, Chicken Waffle, the studio behind XR Swim, is planning to create a full-blown marketplace which will allow developers to charge for content. Granted, a method for paid access to WebXR apps (which are simply hosted as normal web pages accessible through a URL) will require thoughtful implementation.
Last week Google released a beta of Chrome 81 for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows, which means a stable version is just around the corner. One of the most important updates to arrive in Chrome 81 is the ability to use web-based AR apps.
Google first included WebVR, the VR-focused predecessor to the WebXR API, in Chrome 66 back in April 2018. Debuted in Chrome 79 at the end of 2019, WebXR Device API came to devices without AR support.
Now, the stable version of Chrome 81 is expected to release sometime next month, which will carry with it the ability to display web-based AR content.
According to Google’s Chromium blog, the upcoming stable version of Chrome will also include support for the WebXR Hit Test API, an API for placing digital objects in a physical world view. Google says the new API captures both the location of a ‘hit test’, or where the user taps on the screen, and the orientation of the point that was detected.
Image courtesy Google
Appealing to developers, Google says that if you’ve already used the new API to create virtual reality apps, there’s very little new to learn to use AR.
“This is because the spec was designed with the spectrum of immersive experiences in mind. Regardless of the degree of augmentation or virtualization, the application flow is the same. The differences are merely a matter of setting and requesting different properties during object creation, ” the company says.
Chrome 81 is also slated to include web-based NFC (Near Field Communications), which allows a web app to read and write to NFC tags.
If you want to try out the beta, simply download the Chrome Beta app on your preferred device. When you do, make sure to play around with a few examples first..
The latest 8.0 update to Oculus Browser adds experimental support for the Oculus Quest’s hand tracking feature. That means you can use your hands in WebXR apps, which are VR experiences that run natively on a browser page, without the need to download anything.
The feature won’t work in all WebXR apps natively and is not true hand tracking support just yet — it only enables hand tracking to work as an emulated controller. The update arrives just as Facebook adds enhanced support for hand tracking on Quest.
While the experimental feature is not listed in the Oculus Browser 8.0 release notes, a member of the Oculus WebVR/XR team, Artem Bolgar, tweeted about the addition earlier today. As noted by Artem, the support works by emulating controllers and doesn’t yet support tracking a full hand model like you would use in Oculus Home yet.
In the example app linked by Bolgar, the feature tracks your hands to move the in-game controller models in 6DoF. You can then point at objects using the cursor and pinch to make a selection, which will change the color of the cubes. Although you can see this displayed in the video below, it doesn’t show the pinching motion of my fingers, as there’s no in-game representation of the action (as the hand tracking is simply emulating controllers).
The new feature is not enabled by default and needs to be enabled first. You can enable it by navigating to chrome://flags in Oculus Browser and turning on the WebVR hand tracking option. There are a couple of different input methods, but the one we used in the video and the one that worked best is “hands and pointers.”
While the feature is only very experimental for now, and clearly not a proper implementation of full controller-free hand tracking in WebXR applications, it is the first step towards full support. This would open up a wealth of possibility, such as using your own hands to shoot webs as Spider-Man in a WebXR app that runs entirely through the Oculus Browser.
The unofficial third-party Oculus Quest content platform SideQuest launched a beta version of a web page that aims to collect and list Web-based VR experiences in a similar manner to their SideQuest library for Quest. However, this new online site will work on any headset that supports Web-based VR content and allow in-VR users to easily find, explore and launch content they might not have otherwise seen before.
Web-based VR content provided by the WebXR specification (an evolution of the earlier WebVR implementation) provides headset owners with fully immersive content that launches from a VR-compatible version of a Web browser, without a requirement for prior installation of the experiences. Browsers compatible with the standard include Google Chrome for PC VR or the Oculus Browser or Firefox Reality on the Oculus Quest. When users navigate to a compatible address in their headset browser, they can instantly launch a full VR experience.
With the new online tool, SideQuest is looking to make it easier to find and experience this type of VR content. Users only need to navigate to http://sdq.st/webxr in their headset’s browser to find a long and expansive list of compatible experiences, curated and provided by SideQuest, as pictured above.
Clicking on an experience takes you straight to the correct URL and allows you to launch straight into the VR experience. It is a seamless and accessible way for users to find Web-based VR content without having to memorize or bookmark lots of different URLs.
The SideQuest Web-based VR content list features some notable experiences we’ve covered previously, such as the Spider-Man web swinging experience on Quest. The list is still in beta and while SideQuest as a whole is aimed at Oculus Quest users, the list will work in any VR browser that supports the standard.
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.
Mozilla launched a new WebXR app called ‘Hello WebXR’, which is compatible with most headsets that use web browsers such as Oculus Browser on the Quest or Google Chrome on PC VR headsets. The app acts an an introductionary experience for those who are new to VR, showcasing the different types of content and interactions available on the platform.
The experience will work on any WebXR compatible browser on a headset, including Mozilla’s own VR browser Firefox Reality. Other browsers, such as the Oculus Browser on Oculus Quest or Google Chrome on Oculus Rift, also support WebXR and should work with the Mozilla Hello WebXR site.
The main hall environment is where you start Hello WebXR, and features a bunch of different objects to interact with. You can play the xylophone, look at some paintings, look at a Twitter feed displaying any tweets using #hellowebxr, and even spray some graffiti on the walls. The main hall also has some globes that will transport you to 360 degree panoramic scenes.
Three doors will teleport you from the main hall to other locations, where you can experience positional audio, look at some classic sculptures and walk around the top floor of a skyscraper.
Mozilla stated in a blog post that they expect the experience to grow over time, and develop it into “a sandbox that we could use to prototype new experiences and interactions.” To try out Hello WebXR for yourself, just head to this page on your WebXR-compatible headset.
