WebXR: A New Look at Augmented and Virtual Reality

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WebXR: A New Look at Augmented and Virtual Reality


Virtual Reality is quickly becoming a game-changing technology. That said, not everyone can afford or access the more powerful hardware that has made virtual reality an incredible experience for millions of people.  One of the longstanding barriers to VR going mainstream has been cost and accessibility.  That is where the investment of companies like Mozilla and Google has found an entry point into the market. These companies have created web-based Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences that are changing both the cost and accessibility factors for creating and experiencing immersive technology.
WebXR at its core is a collection of code that allows your browser to identify Virtual and Augmented Reality user experiences. You may have started playing with this without realizing it. If you have ever used Google Chrome's Animal AR (like using your mobile device to look up Tiger) or if you have seen one of our previous blogs about Mozilla Hubs and other VR meeting spaces.

So what does that mean? It means that WebXR is already moving into your life. It means the ability to use to power of VR and AR tools is more accessible to anyone than ever before. It also means that the ability to learn to create XR experiences with only an average level of knowledge in coding is already at your fingertips. There are a number of ways to access and create WebXR (AFrame.js, Babylon.js, and three.js) but they all do basically the same thing, though AFrame is the only one specifically designed for use with WebXR technology. The API you use will sense your device, checks capabilities, polls the device position, then gives you the frames necessary to run the experience.

WebXR provides a great place to start building for your students. You can do it without buying expensive platforms to create immersive experiences and without spending intensive time teaching your students to code.

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