Each year, there's a seemingly infinite amount of exciting things happening on the open web. It's hard to keep track of all the new things rolling out, but I'd like to draw your attention to one of them that Mozilla has been quietly working on MozVR. It's a new technology that combines the open web and virtual reality, enabling developers to create virtual worlds that we can step inside.
So let's get into why this technology is not only exciting but really important for the web. For years now, we've had an open web that has limited us in how immersive we can make content. While the web is filled with content that's growing more creative every day, we're restricted in how we can tell stories and engage users.
Imagine visiting National Geographic's website, strapping on a VR headset with leap motion detection, and diving into a documentary about penguins. You could experience it just as the photographers who captured the video did. This is just one example of the potential MozVR can bring to the open web as content creators start using the WebVR API to create VR content that's presentable in the web browser.
And that's just one scenario—the use cases for building on top of the WebVR API are endless. When I think about VR on the open web, I think of Firefox Hello video calls with a friend or family member where I am projected into a VR environment and can interact with them as if I was in the same room. I imagine being able to go to a website, buy a concert ticket, strap on a VR headset, and participate in real time from the comfort of my home. Most important to me as a gamer, open web technologies could help us become further immersed into gaming worlds.
The possibilities behind this technology are as unlimited as your imagination, and I really encourage web developers to both watch the MozVR Team as they continue to innovate this metaverse and dive in and start using this technology to get ahead of the crowd.
Check out these MozVR and WebVR resources that Mozilla is making available to developers, and please know that the Mozilla Developer Network is a rich resource for getting started as a developer and has a great community behind it to help you get started:
This article is part of Benjamin Kerensa's Open Web column, where he delivers the latest on what is happening in the open web, interviews with contributors to projects working on the open web, and his own perspectives on current open web news and events.
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