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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

#51

Post by Sylos »

ericflo wrote: post #33
pcwalton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can also set up a camera in front of your monitor and just record the whole thing. DRM has never been functional. Best it can do, is deflect the average user from just quickly sending it to his friend. But anyone with any motivation can easily get around it.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#53

Post by deltron3030 »

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?

Take regular glasses, and just make them a bit smarter, without changing their appearance much. Could be useful for displaying interface menu elements (e.g. your browser tool bar), this way you'd gain screen size and/or have more direct access to more tools at the same time, without clicking through lists and stuff.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#54

Post by leeoniya »

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…

> 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.

This is extremely disappointing.

I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parallel. Mozilla has hundreds of millions in cashflow, right?

Looks like Servo will be another exciting Mozilla project that will be prematurely dropped after a ton of work and hype-up. RIP Firefox OS, Persona, Thunderbird, etc... :(

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#55

Post by Sylos »

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…

Servo is actually not typically viewed as realistically completable. Even Firefox, which is being developed full-pelt, is behind on web standards (like any other browser is).

So, for Servo to catch up to the current state of Firefox and to then also keep pace with new web standards, it would have to be developed much quicker than Firefox is being developed. So, that would require more than double the development capacity that Mozilla currently has, as they can't drop Firefox development either.

There is some points that could alleviate this: A smaller project grows quicker, it being written in Rust might speed up development in the long run and several components are now shared between Firefox and Servo, meaning that the development and maintenance work is shared as well, but it still is far away from realistically completable.

Which is also not what the project is meant to be. It's a research project. Trying out new things, creating components that can be used in Firefox, and doing experiments with VR or similar are exactly what it can be used for.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#56

Post by woah »

leeoniya wrote: post #54
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. This is extremely disappointing. I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parall…

Why do they keep doing this?

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#57

Post by Manishearth »

leeoniya wrote: post #54
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. This is extremely disappointing. I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parall…

> I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future.

A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. Web compatibility is hard.

Servo has a lot more potential in platforms where you don't need to support the _entire_ set of browser features -- like as an electron replacement, or a platform for something like webVR, or Android embedding (which will probably come out of the VR work as well).

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#58

Post by Manishearth »

rocky1138 wrote: post #36
larsberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

We're still working on web compatibility; that's not changing.

But I don't think we've ever had a concrete goal to have a standalone Servo browser. Parts of servo in firefox? Sure. Trying out new ideas? Sure. Embedding servo a la electron or WebkitView? Sure. But Servo as a standalone browser has always been a "maybe someday" thing -- we've never worked against it, but I don't recall us ever explicitly targeting it, though I think most of us have always had some hope that we'll reach that point eventually.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#59

Post by leeoniya »

Manishearth wrote: post #57
leeoniya wrote: post #54

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. This is extremely disappointing. I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. I simply don't understand how these things cannot be done in parall…

> I think the amount of users you can win back from Chrome with a Servo browser is much larger than any VR audience you can hope to gain in the near future. A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing. Web compatibility is hard . Servo has a lot more potential in platforms where you don't need to support the _entire_ set of browser features -- like as an electron r…

> A Servo browser product is not possible in the near future. That is very much a far future thing.

and an impossibly far future if the Servo team is now refocused on VR, no? how likely is it that these hard problems will be solved by fewer engineer-hours?

perhaps there's some external backer willing to bankroll VR and Servo is just an easy expense to curtail.

Re: Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

#60

Post by jntrnr »

There are some questions around Servo as a result of the announcement, so I just wanted to jump in and talk a bit more about what’s going on. tl;dr - Servo is Mozilla’s vehicle for web engine research, and continues to be a major source of new tech for Firefox. But we’re also adding a more direct path to product for Mixed Reality.

Servo has produced lots of great browser tech. We're seeing that tech make its way into Firefox with Stylo and the Quantum release, and there's on-going work to bring even more tech into Firefox, like the WebRender work that you can try out in the latest nighlies. Servo's goal is to create the best technology for working with both current and upcoming web standards, which means collaborating with multiple product teams, from Firefox to Mixed Reality to other, future explorations.

There’s still a long road to full compatibility with the existing web in all of Servo’s components, and it will take time to get there. In the meantime, though, there are emerging technologies where Mozilla believes it is vital for the open web to play a central role. One of these is Mixed Reality (which refers to both Virtual and Augmented Reality), a space that’s getting a ton of attention from all of today’s tech giants.

Mixed Reality is interesting for Servo in two different respects. First, it’s a huge opportunity: it’s early days and content is brand new, so there’s no long tail of web compat to worry about; we can get products built on Servo to market relatively quickly. By putting open web tech on the cutting edge, Mozilla can help ensure that Mixed Reality doesn’t become yet another siloed technology.

But second, the constraints of Mixed Reality will help us push Servo technology to the limit: we need to achieve 75 or 90 frames per second per eye to make a workable product. The research advances here will pay huge dividends back in traditional browser engines like Firefox.

In short, this is a “yes, and” shift. Servo continues to be about building the best browser tech, period, for use across Mozilla’s products. The increased emphasis on Mixed Reality represents an opportunity to push that tech further, sooner. And the organizational change within Mozilla Research reflects a closer collaboration between the teams needed to make that happen.

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