Getting Started In Web VR

This is what I want. I want to develop in Unity, publish to web, and view in Oculus ( or any VR ). That is the end workflow goal for me.

Okay… So I got the Oculus Rift. One of the first things I did with it was get in to see what the Javascript Library “A Frame” looked like. To my disappointment I clicked the googles and all that happened was the flat screen inside the oculus rift that looked like a regular computer screen divided into two. It looked just like a phone does when you are trying to get Google Cardboard VR to work. So I was like … hu. Well … that’s not exactly what I expected.

I quickly realized that in order for web VR to work with a actual VR device it would have to interface with the browser. And what that meant was the browsers would have to detect the oculus rift and then feed the visual information to the headset device in a much different way than feeding the visual information just to a standard flat screen.

This was only one of the awkward fumbles that I encountered when heading to web VR for the first few weeks. The first was turning on Oculus 2 in order to get a native virtual desktop and a standard keyboard.

What is interesting ( and dismaying ) about all this is seeing that … this stuff is far from flushed out. This is not a well paved road here. These new devices and browsers haven’t quite worked out in a standard way how they are going to communicate with each other. The road as of right now is full of brush and thorns.

BUT, there is certainly progress. And man the people working this stuff out need a extra round of applause because this chaos must be daunting. So, where are we at?

Okay, to get web VR working ( at least in the Rift .. not sure about Vive ) you need to download FireFox Nightly or Chrome Canary. I went with Firefox Nightly.

You have to make sure Unknown Sources is enabled ( check out this awesome gif from omnivirt.com )

Okay … now in Firefox Nightly dial up the URL you want to view.
Like, go to STL CodeScapes front page click the “headset icon”

Once you click that icon put your head set on. You should now be viewing that video from a immersed perspective. If not … there is some setting in Firefox you might want to check. CLICK HERE

So now that we have the viewing taken care of. Lets move into the development. Unity has a new app that looks to make the workflow from web to VR more seamless and less clunky. Unity Web VR That is where we are going to start. Hence the title ‘Getting Started In Web VR.’