Intent to ship: WebVR

[Kearwood "Kip" Gilbert]

As of Oct 29, 2015 I intend to turn WebVR on by default for all
platforms. It has been developed behind the dom.vr.enabled preference.
A compatible API has been implemented (but not yet shipped) in Chromium
and Blink.

Bug to turn on by default:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1218482

Link to standard: https://mozvr.github.io/webvr-spec/webvr.html

[Jet Villegas]

Let the record state that Firefox is first to deliver Web Virtual Reality
to Planet Earth. On to other (virtual) worlds...

Congratulations, VR Team! \o/

--Jet

[Ehsan Akhgari]

First things first, congratulations on getting this close!

What's the status of the specification? I just had a quick skim and it
seems extremely light on details.

There is quite a bit of details missing. The security model is
essentially blank, and the descriptions in section 4 seem to be
high-level overviews of what the DOM interfaces do, rather that detailed
descriptions that can be used in order to implement the specification.

Also some things that I was expecting to see in the API seem to be
missing. For example, what should happen if the VR device is
disconnected as the application is running? It seems like right now the
application can't even tell that happened.

Another question: do you know if Chrome is planning to ship this feature
at some point? Has there been interoperability tests?

Do we know what the other browser vendors think of the API and the
specification?

Thanks,
Ehsan

On 2015-10-26 3:19 PM, Kearwood "Kip" Gilbert wrote:
> As of Oct 29, 2015 I intend to turn WebVR on by default for all
> platforms. It has been developed behind the dom.vr.enabled preference.
> A compatible API has been implemented (but not yet shipped) in Chromium
> and Blink.
>
> Bug to turn on by default:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1218482
>
> Link to standard: https://mozvr.github.io/webvr-spec/webvr.html
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> dev-platform mailing list
> dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
>

[Gervase Markham]

On 26/10/15 19:19, Kearwood "Kip" Gilbert wrote:
> As of Oct 29, 2015 I intend to turn WebVR on by default for all
> platforms. It has been developed behind the dom.vr.enabled preference.
> A compatible API has been implemented (but not yet shipped) in Chromium
> and Blink.

At one point, integrating with available hardware required us to use
proprietary code. Is shipping proprietary code in Firefox any part of
this plan, or not?

Gerv

[vlad...@mozilla.com]

No.

- Vlad

[vlad...@mozilla.com]

On Monday, October 26, 2015 at 9:39:57 PM UTC-4, Ehsan Akhgari wrote:
> First things first, congratulations on getting this close!
>
> What's the status of the specification? I just had a quick skim and it
> seems extremely light on details.

The spec is still a draft, and the API is expected to change significantly (specifically the fullscreen window integration is going to change). The intent to ship here is a bit premature; the intent is to pref it on in nightly & aurora, not ship it all the way to release.

> There is quite a bit of details missing. The security model is
> essentially blank, and the descriptions in section 4 seem to be
> high-level overviews of what the DOM interfaces do, rather that detailed
> descriptions that can be used in order to implement the specification.

Yep.

> Also some things that I was expecting to see in the API seem to be
> missing. For example, what should happen if the VR device is
> disconnected as the application is running? It seems like right now the
> application can't even tell that happened.

Also something that's coming in an upcoming revision of the API.

> Another question: do you know if Chrome is planning to ship this feature
> at some point? Has there been interoperability tests?

They are currently in the same boat as us, shipping it in dev or one-off builds. We're working with them on the specification, and we're generally interoperable currently.

- Vlad

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 10/29/15 1:10 PM, vlad...@mozilla.com wrote:
> The intent to ship here is a bit premature; the intent is to pref it on in nightly & aurora, not ship it all the way to release.

OK. The patches in the "enable it" bugs are enabling on all branches;
we should probably scale that back to just !RELEASE_BUILD, sounds like.

-Boris

[Ehsan Akhgari]

On 2015-10-29 1:10 PM, vlad...@mozilla.com wrote:
> On Monday, October 26, 2015 at 9:39:57 PM UTC-4, Ehsan Akhgari wrote:
>> First things first, congratulations on getting this close!
>>
>> What's the status of the specification? I just had a quick skim and it
>> seems extremely light on details.
>
> The spec is still a draft, and the API is expected to change significantly (specifically the fullscreen window integration is going to change). The intent to ship here is a bit premature; the intent is to pref it on in nightly & aurora, not ship it all the way to release.

Oh OK, turning this on on non-release builds sounds good to me. It
doesn't really require an intent email...

[Gervase Markham]

On 29/10/15 17:07, vlad...@mozilla.com wrote:
>> At one point, integrating with available hardware required us to use
>> proprietary code. Is shipping proprietary code in Firefox any part of
>> this plan, or not?
>
> No.

Awesome! :-)

Gerv