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Firefox Reality Now Available

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Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#101

Post by beaconstudios »

protomikron wrote: post #86
Vinnl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's just about the 2D canvas. With WebXR (I think - I'm not too up-to-date on the field), websites can also offer VR examples. You will need a browser to discover them, but they can still be immersive - you just also need a 2D canvas for regular websites that get you there.

> [...] websites can also offer VR examples. But for what exactly (despite ... porn)? Like I said I get the use-case for games and I also think there is potential for AR - but pure VR for the web ? If it were that important to have 3D to represent information on the web, we would have a lot more 3D websites (without VR) already - which is technically possible for a long time.

if you think of the web as a delivery vector for apps, it makes sense. Visiting a URL to play a VR game or initiate a VR experience makes sense and complies well with the original intent of URLs. Imagine launching (e.g.) minecraft.net and instead of a website, you get dropped into a demo version of the game with a contextual "frame" of information, links, and so on. Or a virtual showroom for a kitchen company where you can explore a 3d model of the kitchen, interact with the furnishings, and select new colours or models.

Putting 3d content on a screen sucks in the same way that putting a 2d plane in 3d does. Making 3d content explorable in 3d makes a lot more sense.

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#103

Post by modzu »

protomikron wrote: post #82

Hm, I don't get it. There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas? I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in…

porn

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#104

Post by [deleted] »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #95
protomikron wrote: post #82

Hm, I don't get it. There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas? I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in…

VR offers a number of advantages for productivity. As many virtual desktops as you want of any size. New ways to model data and manipulate it, think 3D graphs. Virtual telepresence for meetings. Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#105

Post by ss2003 »

RototRobot wrote: post #20
azernik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. Learn to touch type! (Though even then, you're stuck with the problem of finding your keyboard.)

Logitech was working on a keyboard with a steamvr tracking puck https://uploadvr.com/vr-keyboard-logitech-vive-tacker/

That announcement was nearly a year ago and nothing but crickets since. It doesn't seem that technically challenging. I wonder what the hold up is?

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#107

Post by Ajedi32 »

protomikron wrote: post #82

Hm, I don't get it. There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas? I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in…

The advantage of this particular app is that it works on standalone VR headsets, which otherwise don't have access to a decent web browser. Also integrates with Web VR content so you can find and play web-based VR games and videos without taking off the headset. Other than that though I agree with you; apart from a few niche use-cases, right now this isn't really much better than just using the browser on your phone.

Longer-term though, VR (and eventually AR) have the potential to offer a number of significant productivity advantages over desktop displays. Unlimited screen real-estate, the ability to organize your workspace spatially, better interaction with 3D models and data.

It's also possible that there's a whole new set of UI paradigms that we haven't discovered yet which will be enabled by VR/AR interfaces. If we were designing user interfaces from scratch with the ability to project images anywhere in 3D space, what would those interfaces ultimately look like? Are 2D interfaces really the most efficient? Or did we just arrive at that solution as the result of the limitations of current technology?

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#108

Post by skykooler »

larsberg wrote: post #94
nobody271 wrote: post #10

The main problem with web browsing in VR is it's way too low resolution to read text and you can't see your hands so you have to type everything in with that remote character by bloody freaking character. But I guess, if you want to browse the web in VR you might as well do it in Firefox.

The issues with text input are a large part of why we added voice input even in our very first release! w.r.t. text rendering, we're doing a lot of fundamental work in rendering higher-quality text (you can't fix resolution fundamentals, but you can take into account the optics of the hardware better than we all do today), but nothing to announce there yet.

What is doing the speech-to-text processing? Is this part of the Common Voice project? Is the code available to use outside of Firefox Reality?

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#109

Post by tedmielczarek »

skykooler wrote: post #108
larsberg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues with text input are a large part of why we added voice input even in our very first release! w.r.t. text rendering, we're doing a lot of fundamental work in rendering higher-quality text (you can't fix resolution fundamentals, but you can take into account the optics of the hardware better than we all do today), but nothing to announce there yet.

What is doing the speech-to-text processing? Is this part of the Common Voice project? Is the code available to use outside of Firefox Reality?

I checked and it's using Mozilla's DeepSpeech library: https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality/blob/dee6f4...

which is here: https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech

DeepSpeech is the actual voice recognition library, CommonVoice is a project to improve its accuracy by gathering more voice data.

Re: Firefox Reality Now Available

#110

Post by Vinnl »

protomikron wrote: post #86
Vinnl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's just about the 2D canvas. With WebXR (I think - I'm not too up-to-date on the field), websites can also offer VR examples. You will need a browser to discover them, but they can still be immersive - you just also need a 2D canvas for regular websites that get you there.

> [...] websites can also offer VR examples. But for what exactly (despite ... porn)? Like I said I get the use-case for games and I also think there is potential for AR - but pure VR for the web ? If it were that important to have 3D to represent information on the web, we would have a lot more 3D websites (without VR) already - which is technically possible for a long time.

Well... Everything that you'd use a regular VR app for, I guess. It's not quite clear yet what the most important use cases for VR will be, but Mozilla appears to be betting big on providing all API's that might be required to make the web just as capable of providing VR experiences as regular apps (i.e. what ideally would have happened with web apps in the first place), and for that, they need a VR browser. In other words, you'd be able to play a VR game without needing to install anything, by simply visiting a Web VR app, and that app would work on all VR platforms that run VR browsers like Firefox Reality.
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