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Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

blog.servo.org

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Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#31

Post by pcwalton »

ericflo wrote: post #30
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 :(

DRM doesn't factor into this. canvas.drawWindow() has been a thing (for addons) since 2005: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#32

Post by nicoburns »

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…

Agreed, although I think apple has it right in thinking that AR (i.e. overlaying digital information over the real world) is more compelling.

Absolutely not something that mozilla should be focussing on though.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#33

Post by ericflo »

pcwalton wrote: post #31
ericflo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they will never do this for DRM and security reasons :(

DRM doesn't factor into this. canvas.drawWindow() has been a thing (for addons) since 2005: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...

That's pretty cool - so you can just render DRMed video to a texture and record that texture to get around the new DRM stuff?

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#34

Post by staticassertion »

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?

I really want to build a VR-based GUI for a Very Serious Program I'm writing in my free time. It's not a game.

So whether there are or aren't, there's clearly potential. It doesn't seem right to dismiss it just because it hasn't taken off yet - it's extremely early days.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#35

Post by ghthor »

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.

The vive fatigue is due to the non solid headmount. A PSVR style headmount like the Revive makes it infinitely less fatiguing as it no longer is supported by your face, instead it's held up by your spine and the deep muscles of the neck and upper back.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#36

Post by rocky1138 »

larsberg wrote: post #21
phkahler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

So is this the end of the attempt to make Servo into a fully web compatible competitor to go up against/replace Gecko, et al? Was that ever the goal, really? It seemed like Servo was a "let's see if we can do it" and now it's changed into a "what's the point of putting all this effort into making one more 2D web renderer when we can be at the forefront of 3D web renderers?"

Not passing judgement on anything with the above statement. Just trying to make sense of it all.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#37

Post by staticassertion »

wpietri wrote: post #10
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…

I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2] The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much…

Comparing VR today, in a world where portable devices dominate, to VR even a decade ago, in a world where cell phones were only just starting to be commonplace, seems really useless.

The world is an extremely different place. This is, in my opinion, still very early days - by which I mean that we are still in an exploratory phase.

We've never been closer to having the technology necessary for it to take off - resolution was always one huge blocker, portability, weight, 'culture' in terms of computing being something everyone has access to, GPU power, battery, etc.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#38

Post by falcor84 »

ericflo wrote: post #29
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.

What game? {{citation needed}}

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#40

Post by dbetteridge »

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?

I dont know what you would consider non-toy uses, but the company I work for uses VR as a means of demonstrating building structures and layouts to clients.

The model is built in Revit and using this method allows for easy fly/walkthrough and spotting of some issues that might not be as visible in the 3D viewer mode on your screen.

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