There’s a new version of Firefox for VR

* John Carmack said that he used to buy the most insanely expensive machine he could for dev, because by the time he finished the game (a few years), it would be a reasonable spec machine for the average gamer. But he lamented that it was essentially no longer possible to throw enough money at it, because machines are just getting too good, too fast. At Walmart and Best Buy, there are $20 Altec phones that have better specs than the original iPhone. And if you make something insanely good in VR, people will show their friends, and people will WANT it. If it doesn't look insanely good, will it spread? I'm not saying "purposely exclude low-end." I'm saying design for the high-end first, and by the time you're done, it won't be nearly as high-end as you think.

* Sure, "responsive," yes. Want to know the best way to get that? Use an optimized-for-VR game engine. Like Unreal. "smartphone". Yes, sure, here ya go: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/GoogleVR/Daydr...

"People with any device should be able to take part, to interact, to share." Nope. Disagree. You're using hyperbole, or you're being nuts. You are not going to target iOS 4. Or Windows Phone. Feature Phones in India.

"My take on graphics is not that it is unimportant but rather that it is not what is lacking in current 3D content."

...you are literally making a "VR" thing. The only new adjective in what you are building is "VR," of which "graphics" plays a huge part. Without tracking devices, "graphics" is all that "VR" is.

"Plus with some polish WebVR can deliver a decent graphical experience."

I think you overestimate their chances. (Star Wars quote.)

"Beautiful is important. It is photo-realism that is not."

Kiiinda agreed... I think being able to scale all the way to photo-realism would be smart. Is it a Requirement? Dunno.

"it has to run on their current hardware or they won't really use it."

Eh. People do buy PSVR and Oculus and... /shrug

"Then by interacting regularly with people with headsets, people without VR headsets will gradually convert into VR users."

I don't really see that working, honestly. Me having a landline doesn't make me want a smartphone more. Seeing what a smartphone does makes me want a smartphone.

"Web browser did not start with WebGL: they figured out text first, "

That's not really true. Web browser started with the ability to have images. Almost no one had the bandwidth needed for a good experience. Many people had machines that couldn't really run a web browser.

"VR Wiki" / "VR Wordpress"

People keep trying to build an integrated thing that is all the things...

Just like the first web browsers could author HTML, too. And be Usenet clients. And email clients.

Rmmmmm...

"HTTP" "HTML" "CSS" "JS" "LAMP"

Make the building blocks. Let people build VR Wiki / VR Wordpress on top of those tools.

Sorry for late reply... their authoring tools use Unity, not sure about hosting. It's not open source, but it is free (not sure how they plan on making money).

Basically you can create a "world" or a character model and use it or publish it freely, and in-game you can visit other people's worlds.

Nope, perhaps in the future. But we open source all of the reusable components and backport loads of fixes back to the A-Frame, which is open source, which we spend a considerable amount of time maintaining.