WebVR 1.0 available in Firefox Nightly
The Mozilla VR team’s mission is to define and evolve the web as a platform for immersive VR and AR experiences. We are creating a platform (API’s and Browsers), tools and community (aframe.io) to empower content creators to express the best attributes of the web with the experiential nature of VR and AR technologies.
The WebVR API is a set of DOM interfaces that enable WebGL rendering into Virtual Reality headsets and access to the various sensors for orientation, positioning and input controls.
As of August 16, Firefox Nightly will support the WebVR 1.0 API. This replaces the earlier WebVR API implementation with the standard proposed by the WebVR w3c community group. Our earlier article on the proposal has some resources to help the user get started.
Firefox has been heavily optimized for the best VR experience. The latest updates includes a dedicated VR rendering path that ensures smooth and consistent frame rendering, lower latency and rendering at headsets native frame rate, independent from the user’s main monitor.
This is the same API that has been implemented in the latest Chromium experimental builds and the Samsung Gear VR browser. In addition to enabling access to the latest WebVR sites, the new API supports new features such as rendering separate content to the user’s main display display for spectator views and the ability to traverse links between WebVR pages.
If the user has set preferences to optimize their VR experience in earlier builds, it’s best to start with a fresh profile as the default values will provide optimal performance. Follow these instructions, for how to create a new profile. See here for instructions on how to configure Oculus home to work with Firefox
The update fully supports Oculus CV1 and DK2 devices on Windows using the latest Oculus runtime. Instructions on how to configure Oculus home to work with Firefox is available here. Oculus 0.5 SDK on OSX is no longer supported, and Firefox for Android will only support WebVR through polyfill libraries.
Firefox 50 Developer Edition will continue to support the old WebVR API until September 12th.
Support for OpenVR (HTC Vive), OSVR, and positionally tracked controllers will be coming soon.
Please reach out with any feedback on how to improve WebVR support in Firefox.
I look forward to visiting all of the WebVR worlds!
