What’s New
Yesterday Firefox announced a new browser called Firefox Reality on their Mixed Reality Blog. The browser’s goal is to support web browsing in virtual and augmented reality and experiment with new technology and how to design for new formats. It will primarily support HMDs like Rift and Vive.
Firefox Reality is designed and engineered specifically for the next generation of standalone VR and AR headsets, but during initial development our source code will also run in Developer Mode on Daydream and Gear VR devices.
On the mozill blog, they also featured the announcement and discussed their motivation.
Mixed reality is the wild west. How do you type? How do you express emotion? How do you view the billions of existing 2D web pages as well as new 3D content? How do you communicate? Who maps the world and who controls what you see? Can we build on our work with voice recognition and connected devices to create a better browsing experience? We love tackling these questions. Everything is new again, and we are constantly building and experimenting to find the right answers.
They also release a short demo video.
My Take:
The features in the demo video are a bit disappointing, but it's new and they still have a ton to flesh out.
I’ve used Mozilla’s WebVR features for viewing models on Sketchfab and it was fairly straightforward, so I have high hopes that this browser will be too. So far my experience of looking at flat web pages in VR has been underwhelming, so if they have tools that allow designers to figure out new ways to present content, that could take VR web browsing from being a novelty to having actual function. Lastly, on their blog they note the importance of transitioning between uses.
The future of mixed reality is about delivering experiences, not about building applications. There shouldn’t be friction moving from one experience to another.
This is important because thus far, any WebVR content I used meant browsing on the desktop, opening the content, then putting on the headset. I’d have to jump out of the headset before moving on. Using Sketchfab as an example, for each new model I wanted to view, I’d have to take the headset off, open a new model, then put the headset back on. If I could stay in the headset and comfortably browse the whole time, that would be a huge improvement.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to see some of my other recent content on VR, check out
Content in VR Games - Sometimes Shorter can be Better
Oculus Updates On The Santa Cruz Headset
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