I've done some experiments in this area, by transplanting my existing vim-in-console-in-browser environment to VR. It's not good enough for me to live in or invest dev work into yet.
Steam has a VR browser, which I used for my tests. You have to get keystrokes in through a side channel, though, since it steals some vital key bindings including the spacebar, and it has its own screensaver which I didn't find a way to disable (and it can't sense keystrokes through a side-channel). A purpose-built browser wouldn't have that issue. Also, there's no way to control the positions of shells within 3D space or fill the whole 180deg yet.
The main issue right now is resolution. You get a lot more visual area to work with, but at the expense of a much larger minimum font size. I compared the smallest barely tolerable font size on a DK2 to the actual font size I was using on my main monitor, and it was about 3x the angular dimension; that is, the same visual area would either be a 300-column terminal on my monitor, or a 100-column terminal in VR. The DK2 is 1920x1080, so ignoring optics and subpixel issues, a 2560x1440 Gear or CV1 would make that ~2.25x, and a 4k HMD would make that 1.5x.
I have absolutely zero confidence that a browser based environment can run >90 FPS with very low latency and zero dropped frames. I'd say I'd love to be proven wrong but I'm not sure I care. Why exactly should I prefer a 3d VR environment running in a browser rather than natively?
My interest in WebVR is almost entirely for it's discovery and delivery advantages. Downloading, installing, configuring and running a native application certainly will always be the more reliable path to consistently high performance. If you want to sit down and devote some time and effort to playing "Elite Dangerous", native is clearly the way to go. But, for a quick demo or cat video snack experience, are you really going to install my app? I expect most people would greatly prefer the convenience and security of the browser sandbox for the small experiences.
I'm also not a big fan fancy browser demos. People have this fair speciation that anything in a browser will run well on their 5 year old laptop. This is basically true. Except for when you get into 3d content. There's also an expectation that things load relatively quickly. Rich games with tens to hundreds of Meg's of content do not load quickly. Then they continue to not load quickly everytime you go back to that page. (If not everytime, then sometimes, which is even worse)
I do agree that there should be a fast and easy way to experience VR, uh, experiences without having to download native installers for every one. I'm not sure what way that will be. I am extremely unsold on the browser being the solution. But if it works out then that'd be pretty nice.
I think the browser will be powerful enough for some simple VR experiences that consumers will want to engage with for <5mins. At least at the beginning. I've been working with the webVR stuff and have gotten a consistent 75 fps on an MBP, which is the DK2 limit. Not a 5 year old laptop, but also not a heavy gaming rig that Oculus expects people to own.
Maybe webVR won't be the way to get AAA titles in VR, but it will certainly lower the barrier to 1) development of VR content 2) distribution. I think webVR can do a lot for the adoption of VR without "poisoning the VR well."
Is that based on anything or is it just a gut feeling?
Unreal Engine in asm.js looked pretty impressive to me. If we can get VR to work on the Galaxy Note, albeit with custom hardware access, then Firefox on a desktop doesn't seem unreasonable.
Having low latency, no frames dropped running natively is hard. Exceptionally hard. One of the biggest issues is actually drivers and the near infinite number of hardware permutations. It's still a major issue with the SDK. Now let's add a super heavy, bloated web browser in between the OS and pixels. I've yet to play any decent WebGL demo that didn't have minor hitches or dropped frames. VR is merciless. You need to make your frame 100% of the time or it's a majorly jarring issue.
It's possible that working on new technologies like WebVR will feed improvements to other parts of the browser (faster parsing, more robust rendering, WebGL, etc). Even if it doesn't have a direct impact, just having more smart people involved in brower tech will help.
Literally nobody will notice when Firefox will start shipping components written in Rust. It will be some footnote about security somewhere that will be ignored. But everyone will be like OMG VIRTUAL REALITY THE FUTURE IS HERE.
VRML was amazing. Playing with it is what convinced me that VR is the future and everything from then until now has just been me waiting for the technology to catch up to the ideas.
"I worked on a VRML retail store that had 3D products on 3D shelves and 3D customer service reps you could chat with. It was just like shopping in a real world retail store, except you're tripping on LSD flying uncontrollably upside down through a bright colored world of blocks and pyramids while wearing binoculars until you punch a hole in the sky and your browser crashes. The world just wasn't ready to shop in 3D."
For all it's faults, I used to love writing VRML. In fact it was probably the last time I got giddy with excitement when talking about the internet as everything since has just been a case of trying to get web applications to catch up with desktop application.
I also agree that the world just wasn't ready for VRML. It was so far ahead of it's time that it even pre-dated 3D hardware accelerated graphics chips coming as standard on desktop PCs!
Indeed, there was a great example of collaborative VRML on-line in the late nineties, by exploring a 3D 'house' together you could unlock certain features, everyone ended up in the bouncy fireplace! We were very excited about the potential, it's only been 20 years to wait for the hardware to catch up :)
The hardware has been ready for 15 years already (just think of all the 3D multi-player games and Second Life clones out there).
What we had to wait for was the technology to be reinvented a dozen times before client side web languages finally reached the same point that desktop software development was 20 years previously (and let's not forget the prolonged stagnation in web technologies as pioneered by the dominance of IE6).
Like myself, the enthusiasm that you felt may have had more to do with yourself not yet developing a healthy sense of skepticism for technology than the usefulness of the technology itself.
I can definitely see some uses for it - architectural walkthroughs for example. But using it for creating a virtual store would just get in the way of doing any shopping.
Oh I didn't think it would replace HTML. For me the appeal was because VRML was the closest thing we had to the 3D rendered remote mainframe logins that Hollywood hacker films loved to show off.
Running around a VR modelled web page made me feel like the Lawnmower Man or Joey hacking into the Ellingson Mineral Company supercomputer (well, maybe not Joey specifically because he was a n00b)
Confirmed for architectural walkthroughs! The lab I worked at in college used VRML for some interactive building models on a rear projected 3-screen polarized 3D setup. Pretty fun stuff.
