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WebXR Device API Specification

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In this episode, we talk about the current status of WebVR. I'm your host, Alexis Menard, and today, we look at the future of immersive experiences on the Web. This is WebVR.

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WebVR can already be used today. And it ships in various browsers. It's shipping in Edge* on Windows* with the latest Windows® 10 release. Your immersive experience will also work on Firefox* Desktop on Windows since version 55. On Chrome*, WebVR support is enabled for Android* behind what we call Origin Trial. Your domain can get whitelisted for trial. On Desktop, there is a Canary Build, where you can try WebVR by enabling it in the settings.

With that said, the Immersive Web Community Group is moving to define the next generation of WebVR, called WebXR Device API. This new API is a replacement of WebVR, and it is an intentional break, based on feedback from the developer community. It provides more features, a better API, and opens the possibility to support more use cases, like AR.

[INAUDIBLE] for it is easy. And there will be peripherals to emulate WebVR, on top of WebXR, to keep content working. Most of the topics and concepts we covered in this series apply to WebXR Device API—Firefox, Chrome, and Edge are fully supporting WebXR Device APIs. And we expect the API to ship in 2018, with a full standardization in 2019.

Although a few improvements to look at is better input support inside WebXR device API, making it easier to support controllers to make the experience more immersive. The Web platform will also receive some improvements with WebGL to support ES 3.X, features such as compute shaders. This will allow developers more advanced immersive experiences. Look out for WebAssembly now, and it ships in every browser. It helps create native-like performance for some of your workloads.

With WebVR and later, WebXR Device API, we think that it will open up an easy way to create content and share it with the world. It's especially exciting, because the Web has a broad set of content, video, 3D, and social VR that could leverage WebVR to bring immersive experiences to users. Thanks for watching and subscribing to the Intel Software channel. We'll see you next week for the final episode of WebVR.