from the I-could-really-get-into-that! dept.
Mozilla's Firefox Reality web browser is now available
Mozilla's vision of a VR-first web browser is ready for consumers to download and judge.
Firefox Reality is a browser built entirely for virtual reality. While you may have read about desktop Firefox or Chrome adding WebVR support, Firefox Reality is a web browser that you actually use entirely inside a VR headset. You can visit URLs, search things and otherwise browse the 2D and 3D internet within the new browser all without moving a mouse, just your VR hand controller.
Firefox Reality is available on the Oculus, Viveport and Daydream platforms and is optimized to run on the latest standalone mobile headsets like the Oculus Go and Lenovo Mirage Solo.
Also at Engadget, Road to VR, VRFocus, and VentureBeat.
Related: Hubs by Mozilla: A New Way to Get Together Online
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd:
Today, we’re excited to share a preview release of Hubs by Mozilla, a new way to get together online within Mixed Reality, right in your browser. Hubs is the first experiment we’re releasing as part of our Social Mixed Reality efforts, and we think it showcases the potential for the web to become the best, most accessible platform to bring people together around the world in this new medium.
[...] When using a Mixed Reality headset with Hubs, you’ll be able to interact online in a whole new way. Instead of through a screen, you will be spending time together in what feels like a real place. You can make eye contact, high five, laugh together, or just explore. It’s up to you, and it all happens right in your browser just like any other website.
[...] When in the room, you can see one another, move around, and pick up and throw virtual objects. And of course, you can hear each other’s voices with fully spatialized audio, so it sounds like you are in a real place.
Source: Introducing Hubs: A new way to get together
Today Igalia announces Wolvic, a new browser project with an initial focus of picking up where Firefox Reality leaves off.
XR (eXtended Reality, an umbrella term for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and similar technologies) systems have advanced quite a bit recently, and experiencing them today is eye-opening. Mozilla invested a lot into R&D in XR in the late 2010s, and in late 2018 they released an experimental browser called Firefox Reality. It was a great entry into the XR field, helping establish what a browser in these devices really looks like, and figure out the unique challenges. Today we're excited to take up this experiment and continue this work as a complete project.
We at Igalia believe the Web is important to the XR space in a large number of ways. XR systems which provide an immersive OS need web browsers to be part of that. Entering a "reality" without access to everything that already exists on the Web would be pretty terrible.
Igalia is known for its work on open source graphics drivers.
Also at Phoronix.
Previously: Mozilla Launches "Firefox Reality", a VR Web Browser
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday September 19 2018, @07:03AM (3 children)
I guess people will move around a lot in their VR internet universe.
To dodge pop ups.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bussdriver on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
Instead of the UX employees continuing to alienate their users, they should have them design experimental UI in dead end projects like this one. Maybe somebody else can restore some freedom to the main browser now? Somehow they can't fire anybody over there.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:42PM
And the worst of the worst - these guys are just making the same old mistakes. For 99% of tasks, we don't want immersive interfaces, we want interfaces that are at our fingertips.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:35PM
Good joke, but seriously there will undoubtedly be a function to fix content in the user's view regardless of where they look. There are good reasons for this functionality, thus it would definitely get abused.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:03AM (2 children)
Why?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @10:38AM
Those 400 million worth of google dollards need to be used for something (not listening to the user of course, the user is always wrong).
(Score: 1) by TheFool on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:30PM
Just a bit of investment, I imagine. It's hard to compete in a saturated market like the current browser market. If the VR browser market takes off, being one of the first ones there and having a few years development behind you is a nice boon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Wednesday September 19 2018, @01:00PM (5 children)
I have some 3D medical images, I'd like to view in a browser rather than special software....
Also, we might accidentally figure out a better use for VRML ;-)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:08PM (4 children)
What format are these medical images in? What makes you think Firefox Reality will support them?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:57PM (2 children)
Upskirt shots.
Because porn is porn.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:12PM (1 child)
PNG and COLLADA are formats. Upskirt shots are what you beat your meat to once you slip on your Oculus Goon [urbandictionary.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:49PM
Handy Hint 2: Urban Dictionary...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:08PM
well my pixel phone and dream thing shows the "jpeg vr" just fine. the original images are tiff from medical device, but the format seems quite standard.
So a VR browser might need to use flicky glasses, but it would be fine just as a rotate model.
I know a few physicians who would appreciate it.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday September 19 2018, @01:59PM
Someone only now needs to design a 3-d topology for navigating the web.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:02PM
How about instead of spending your development hours on fucking VR and Ruby ripoffs, you actually work on making your browser less of a fucking disaster?
But that would involve admitting you were wrong pretty much uniformly for the last 5 years. And after jettisoning the classic extension system I suppose there's zero chance of that.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:12PM (2 children)
Maybe in this new virtual world Firefox won't suck balls.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:53PM
You'll need a pink filter insert for that effect.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:06PM
All browsers suck. Firefox just sucks less.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:19PM
they may need to have side projects like this to keep from being left behind when new tech comes about but it just depends on how many man/woman/pronoun hours they devote to these side projects. i mean printing web pages is all screwed up in firefox while chromium works fine. chromuim also renders the pages noticeably faster: still...