Intent to Prototype: WebXR Depth Sensing Performance Improvements

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

alco...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/immersive-web/depth-sensing/blob/main/explainer.md

Specification

https://immersive-web.github.io/depth-sensing

Summary

Exposes several new mechanisms to customize the behavior of the depth sensing feature within a WebXR session, with the goal of improving the performance of the generation or consumption of the depth buffer. The key mechanisms exposed are: the ability to request the raw or smooth depth buffer, the ability to request that the runtime stop or resume providing the depth buffer, and the ability to expose a depth buffer that does not align with the user's view exactly, so that the user agent does not need to perform unnecessary re-projections every frame.

Blink component

Blink>WebXR

Motivation

Web Developers use the depth sensing feature for a number of reasons; however, the existing shape of the API needs some tweaking to accommodate for changes in hardware (non-eye-aligned depth buffers), and to improve performance of developer experiences who often don't need depth sensing during the full scope of their experience.

Initial public proposal

None

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Pending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

These features have been designed to work in a backwards compatible way. Sites have to explicitly opt-in to receive any of this new behavior.

Gecko: Defer (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/487)

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: Strongly positive Many of these changes have been asked for by other developers

Other signals: Feature changes were developed in collaboration with Meta in the Immersive Web Working Group to address their needs as well.

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

None

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes

https://wpt.fyi/results/webxr/depth-sensing?label=experimental&label=master&aligned

Flag name on about://flags

webxr-depth-performance

Finch feature name

WebXRDepthPerformance

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/410607163

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5074096916004864?gate=5139496108294144

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.