Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

blog.servo.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 123 posts

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#21

Post by larsberg »

phkahler wrote: post #19
larsberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things! Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to…

>> Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. So building a fully functional browser is not higher priority than getting the half-baked browser working in a niche environment? I'm half joking here, and half serious. How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? And why does it need to be awar…

> How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR?

Great question! Some of the best early work on this was done by ex-Mozilla, current-Google employee Josh Carpenter - check out:

http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/ http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/

There's a lot we can do that is even beyond these early explorations to deliver new features to developers to experiment with and users to try soon via Servo, alongside GeckoView in new VR/AR-focused browser products.

If you take a look at the link I provided above on remaining work and rough estimates to get things just working in Servo (and not FULLY web compat), you're looking at an effort of several years for the entire team, and that's assuming the web platform both stayed still and went ahead and finished writing all the tests and specs for everything on the web that is today neither tested nor fully spec'd. I don't see that in the cards for 2018.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#22

Post by bitL »

rocky1138 wrote: post #17
larsberg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it. We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in manufacturing and industrial settings, though consumer use is still less common. If you have't come across it, this HBR article is one of the best public materials: https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-realit... VR is certainly still emerging as a…

It may not be Instagram-level successful, but BigScreen really impressed me. Sitting on a virtual balcony, overlooking a huge city while having multiple desktops scaled to different sizes showed me the direction that productive desktops will be heading in the next 10-15 years. I can see myself developing software in VR using virtual monitors rather than in my office with real monitors in the mid-term future. The #1 p…

You'd need to reduce the weight of VR/AR glasses to that of regular glasses, i.e. <100g. Clunky heavy headsets stand no chance for professional use, fatigues sets in after 1 hour and gets worse every day of wearing it.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#23

Post by deltaprotocol »

larsberg wrote: post #4
forapurpose wrote: post #2

Does this mean Servo will exist only as a mixed reality platform, and they are abandoning the independent next-generation browser project? EDIT: Is it an organizational change - i.e., does the Servo team now report to Mixed Reality?

Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things! Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to…

I'm really proud of what the Servo team has achieved and since I'm always looking at it from a big distance, I believe you are all able to judge this much better than me.

That said, this news do not sound good to me. Again, this is from a great distance, but from here, taking a future-focused team with great respect from the community, a team with an important and invaluable mission and that has successfully delivered over years, and shifting it (or forking it) towards complete uncertainty feels like a dangerous move that reminds me of the phone OS efforts.

Good riddance and may your vision be right. We need someone with Mozilla's goals looking deeper into VR so that we don't end up in the hands of the Big Corps in the near future, that is for sure, no matter if VR ends up being niche. How important that technology will be for the masses is yet to be proven and that's why I fear for the web, the battle proven real thing that faces the greatest threats from closed silos today. I don't feel it should be taken on equal terms with what is still fictional speculation. It needs full energy to make it to the future in good health. We already failed to deliver a beautiful, open and user centered internet to the future, we can't loose the open web.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#24

Post by rocky1138 »

bitL wrote: post #22
rocky1138 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be Instagram-level successful, but BigScreen really impressed me. Sitting on a virtual balcony, overlooking a huge city while having multiple desktops scaled to different sizes showed me the direction that productive desktops will be heading in the next 10-15 years. I can see myself developing software in VR using virtual monitors rather than in my office with real monitors in the mid-term future. The #1 p…

You'd need to reduce the weight of VR/AR glasses to that of regular glasses, i.e. <100g. Clunky heavy headsets stand no chance for professional use, fatigues sets in after 1 hour and gets worse every day of wearing it.

I think that's subjective. The Vive has been pretty good for me over the long term usage.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#25

Post by kbenson »

bitL wrote: post #22
rocky1138 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be Instagram-level successful, but BigScreen really impressed me. Sitting on a virtual balcony, overlooking a huge city while having multiple desktops scaled to different sizes showed me the direction that productive desktops will be heading in the next 10-15 years. I can see myself developing software in VR using virtual monitors rather than in my office with real monitors in the mid-term future. The #1 p…

You'd need to reduce the weight of VR/AR glasses to that of regular glasses, i.e. <100g. Clunky heavy headsets stand no chance for professional use, fatigues sets in after 1 hour and gets worse every day of wearing it.

You can already get close to this with near eye light field displays[1], but the resolution suffers massively. As a bonus though, it can correct for a glasses prescription in software.

1: http://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field-...

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#26

Post by acdha »

RaleyField wrote: post #8

Am I the only one thinking VR for consumers won't happen for the same reason 3D television didn't happen 5(?) years ago? It's too clumsy. If you aren't gonna walk with it then it's 360 display that makes you vomit, and if you are gonna walk with it not every consumer has huge empty room where that's feasible. Most of us have couch or desk at home where we consume media, not empty warehouse. I predict whatever Mozilla…

I’m more interested in AR at this point: overlaying content on the real world avoids the walking around problem and at least Pokémon Go shows there’s interest outside of techie circles. Mozilla has a vested interest in that happening on the web rather than in iOS/Android apps, which seems like an uphill fight.

Distraction does seem like a major risk but I like the way they’ve been pulling pieces over to Firefox. It’d be really nice if that model worked so they could avoid getting as bogged down in web compatibility.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#27

Post by hawkice »

phkahler wrote: post #18
ggg9990 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current hardware is toy-quality, so most applications are toys. When the hardware gets to pro-quality, the applications are virtually infinite (imagine being able to create any possible experience for any person... having sex with their dead husband, commanding the battle of Thermopylae, Ender’s Game, playing basketball against Michael Jordan, visiting family thousands of miles away, visiting dead family thousand…

>> ...having sex with their dead husband... I know some people claim pornography has been a driver of technology, but necrophilia? really?

HN is like an infinite pit into which all sarcasm falls, so just in case: pornography with live subjects isn't necrophilia just because the subjects have, since the time of recording, died.

Surely the more normal version is the one GP was talking about.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#28

Post by andybak »

vvanders wrote: post #5

> Coming in to 2018, we see virtual and augmented reality devices transitioning from something just for hardcore gamers and enterprises into broad consumer adoption. Every time I see phrases like this I just cringe. As someone who spent a ton of time in the gamedev/3D UI space I've yet to see anything about VR that points to be being successful in anything other than small markets. I think there are some amazing appl…

Forget "useful" for a moment. How does good VR make you feel? Have you not had any "wow" moments?

I'm constantly surprised how blown away people are when they try (real) VR for the first time. That's what makes me optimistic about it as a medium.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#29

Post by ericflo »

88e282102ae2e5b wrote: post #3

Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? Or is that typical assumption that the applications will emerge only once the technology exists?

Someone lost 70lbs playing my VR game. I think fitness is a huge use case for this stuff.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#30

Post by ericflo »

hammerandtongs wrote: post #14

"""We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene.""" This is the most important missing piece, are their bugs for this? Until we have html/dom textures in vr I just don't see webvr being very successful. Just like the headset isolates you from the room, the lack of normal web content in vr/mr is very isolating.

I think they will never do this for DRM and security reasons :(
Post reply on HN