Mozilla is Experimenting with AR through the New WebXR App

Users will now be able to experiment with web based AR, thanks to Mozilla’s new release, the WebXR Viewer app that can now be downloaded from iTunes on iOS devices.

“WebXR is a proposed cross-platform Web API for AR and VR. But, proposals cannot become specifications without developer and consumer feedback, so we are releasing the WebXR Viewer to give web developers a chance to experiment with AR, and provide input to the WebXR community as they develop AR support in the WebXR specification.”

The release allows developers to navigate to websites written using the webxr-polyfill Javascript library, and record and share videos of their web content and makes use of the ARKit platform. The developers using the app will be able to more easily test, demonstrate and share their web-based AR experiments.

“We’ve also been working on integrating the webxr-polyfill into the popular three.js graphics library and the A-Frame framework to make it easy for three.js and A-Frame developers to try out these ideas”, MacIntyre mentioned on the Mozilla mixed reality blog.

The code written with the library can run on both, the iOS WebXR Viewer and Google’s experimental WebARonARCore APK on Android. It will soon be available for WebVR on desktop.

According to MacIntyre, the Principal Research Scientist at Mozilla, the companies working on the tech were in general agreement to rename the WebVR 2.0 proposal to WebXR Device API to “reflect broad agreement that AR and VR devices should be exposed through a common API.”  XR may be used to refer to Augmented, Virtual or Mixed reality. The WebVR Community Group was also renamed to the Immersive Web Community Group.

Although it may take some time for the applications of the app to surface, coders have already started to deploy fun experimental apps as an example of the transformative power of mixed reality.