Mozilla on Enabling the Open Metaverse with WebVR, A-Frame, and Servo

Some of the earliest experiments of making VR a first-class citizen on the web originated at Mozilla in 2014. Then the WebVR spec was drafted in a collaboration between Mozilla and Google’s implementations. There’s been a lot of excitement and momentum building around WebVR over the last couple of months first with the WebVR announcements by Oculus at Oculus Connect 3, and then with over 140 WebVR developers meeting for a W3C workshop on WebVR that happened on October 19th & 20th.

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I had a chance to stop by Mozilla’s offices and catch up with two of the company’s WebVR developers, Diego Marcos and Chris Van Wiemeersch, who talked about the big takeaways that happened at the recent W3C WebVR Workshop.

There were some commitments made for a publicly available WebVR-enabled browser from Google in Q1 2017 and a pilot program from Mozilla also in Q1. Diego talks about Mozilla’s new experimental, high-performance web browser, Servo, implementing the WebVR APIs, and Chris talks the unprecedented momentum and public support that WebVR is seeing across the VR industry.

We also talk about some of the open web concepts like progressive web apps, launching WebGL games as native apps using Electron, emerging technologies enabled by the blockchain like the IPFS distributed web, and some of the next steps for WebVR.

Get colorful with A-Painter! Paint in VR from your browser and then share it with all your friends over the Web. https://t.co/qp2f2EB2Tz pic.twitter.com/fycL8o4jxL

— A-Frame (@aframevr) September 20, 2016

Hyperlinks are coming to WebVR! https://t.co/pfMgQDI2pf

Brought to you from the future by Mozilla VR! (Demo by @EricaLayton @whoyee @cvanw) pic.twitter.com/nBAbM7fOIT

— Mozilla VR (@mozillavr) November 2, 2016

WebVR Resource Links

• WebVR.info
• Sign up for WebVR Slack channel
• IsWebVRReady.org current status of WebVR API implementations
• Mozvr.com
• WebVR Coming to Servo: Part 1
• 3-month WebVR Hackathon starting now
• WebVR: Developing for the Immersive Web VRDC presentation by Tony Parisi
• W3C WebVR Workshop
• Three.js
• Babylon.js
• GLAM – GL and Markup
• SceneVR
• A-Frame
• PrimroseVR
• React VR
• WebVR Polyfill
• glTF interview with Neill Trevett
• Vizor.io
• IPFS distributed web
• Electron – Cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
• React Native – Build Native Mobile Apps using JavaScript and React
• Ejecta
• Service workers
• HTTP/2 Server Push
• Progressive Web App articles by Ada Rose Edwards
• Coming Soon WebVR.rocks

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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip