That is a funny domain. Why it exists?
WebVR Experiments
21–30 of 57 posts
Re: WebVR Experiments
#22That is a funny domain. Why it exists?
Top Level Domains have been available for sale for some time now. Google purchased .google, and registered a blog domain under that.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#23This has the potential to have two, maybe even three times as many users as VRML. Seriously though, has everybody forgotten VRML? It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.
Well, obviously GPU hardware has become a lot cheaper, more powerful, and more widely available in the last 20 years. VR display hardware hasn't become ubiquitous in the same way, but it's still way beyond what was previously available to consumers.
Also, VRML took the approach of trying to build all kinds of special-purpose functionality into the platform (see e.g. http://gun.teipir.gr/VRML-amgem/spec/part1/concepts.html#Eve... or http://gun.teipir.gr/VRML-amgem/spec/part1/concepts.html#Int...). This is similar to what old-fashioned fixed-function OpenGL used to look like. Over the years, graphics APIs have evolved to become more general-purpose and programmable. And we've seen a similar trend with browser APIs: consider how Service Workers have replaced the old AppCache, or how MediaSource has replaced proprietary video streaming plugins. The design of WebGL/WebVR is a lot more flexible, and better suited to the modern web, than VRML was.
Obviously this doesn't mean that VR is going to be a huge success this time around, but it's also not fair to assume that nothing has changed in the last 20 years.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#24This has the potential to have two, maybe even three times as many users as VRML. Seriously though, has everybody forgotten VRML? It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.
VRML was amazing. I distinctly remember the hours upon hours upon hours I spent playing on CyberTown[1]. It was based on an Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin for VRML (named Blaxxun), providing a full 3D environment... and this was in the late 90's / early 2000's.
For its time it was incredible, far beyond the graphics for any multiplayer world I'd seen up til then - especially considering it was in the browser. It was essentially 3D chat in common map areas, with your own home like Geocities. You could upload your own assets for your avatar, including your appearance and the somewhat annoying but awesome and little-known functionality to have a sound (wav file if I recall correctly) to play to other players based on your proximity to them. I went all-in with a ghost avatar, and a funny/spooky ghost sound. The hours I spent roaming just to get the "what was that sound?!" reaction from other players was priceless.
I will remember that experience fondly for as long as I live. I was a gentle phantasm gleefully haunting a 3D world. Great memories, though more specific details are a faint whisper.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#25Slightly OT: Peak and decline of VR related search queries on Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=vr,psvr,oculus,ht...
The problems with VR are much higher-level than anyone wants to admit. Nobody wants to wear a headset on their face. They'll try it for the novelty, but they have a hard time doing it very long, or mustering up the motivation to do it frequently.
VR won't hit critical mass until movie-style "holograms" are implemented (check out the video game in Her for an interesting example [0]), just as tablets didn't catch on until they looked and functioned just like the thin slates that had been dreamed of in sci-fi.
[0; NSFW] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7MgbMI5zhw Example pulled from YouTube. Very NSFW language.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#26Slightly OT: Peak and decline of VR related search queries on Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=vr,psvr,oculus,ht...
That appears to correlate strongly with the Christmas shopping season. For example, here's a couple similar looking trends for "ps4" and "xbox one": https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=ps4,xbox%20one
I don't think this indicates any lack of interest in the technology.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#27This has the potential to have two, maybe even three times as many users as VRML. Seriously though, has everybody forgotten VRML? It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.
> It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.
VR, VMs & cloud computing, automation "taking all our jobs". We've been running the same course since at least the 1960s. Everything that's new is old already.
Even the space race has been restarted. Maybe this should be a new Olympic Games category - "Set foot on the moon, by starting from first principals."
Re: WebVR Experiments
#28Viewing this on a beefy desktop, running Linux-Chrome, I'm seeing ~18 FPS, with very frequent freezes and frame skips. (Especially on the ping-pong demo.) I don't have my cardboard on hand, but this sounds headache-inducing in VR.
I have a Nexus 5X and trying this just crashed my phone. As in everything froze and then the device rebooted. I only tried one experiment[0] and couldn't even get it to run.
[0]: https://www.webvrexperiments.com/experiment/mass-migrations
Re: WebVR Experiments
#29Awesome. I remember last year going through all of the chrome experiments [1] on my smart mirror and being absolutely stunned. Regardless on your views of VR, platform, form factor, etc.. these are just cool. Does anyone know what controllers are used with android phones (for the ping pong game)? https://www.chromeexperiments.com/
I assume it supports the Daydream VR controller.
Re: WebVR Experiments
#30Although pretty cool - I am not convinced that the browser is the right medium for this but I am happy to be proven wrong! While the web is an amazing platform and I do wish it grows beyond what any app store and I think that we need to fundamentally rethink some parts of it to make it better and allow more streamlined clients to operate on top of it. Luckily WebVR is just a client API which should not be hard to mir…
Honestly nowadays it seems like the browser is the right medium for everything. Most people I know who aren't developers or video game players seem to spend like 95% of their time on a computer in a web browser.