Mozilla wants its newest internet conquest to be mixed reality. The company has just showed off its first look at “Firefox Reality,” a browser built specifically for headsets. Mozilla has been behind some super important work here already with things like A-Frame and the WebVR/WebAR standards, so this isn’t a big surprise at all.
The big deal here is that Mozilla is committed to running this cross-platform and open source which should be a welcome change for a platform where every headset maker has its own way to access traditional web content.
Firefox Reality isn’t quite ready for primetime, but the team had a short demo to show off.
The demo certainly isn’t the most convincing use case of browser-based virtual reality, but it kind of reflects one of the big issues for VR browsing. In a 2D web content world, what’s the point? And is 3D content enthralling enough for sites to restructure their web presence for headset users?
The thing is at the end of the day, browsers like this aren’t focused on sites like TechCrunch building experiences that let you walk up to a virtual table and pick up a virtual copy of a TechCrunch magazine to start flipping through, they’re more focused on turning the web into an engine to hop through different realities. In the longish short-term, that’s likely going to be focused on gaming, but Firefox’s blog post on the topic didn’t have much to say about that, instead mostly noting that you just have to start somewhere. “This is the first step in our long-term plan to deliver a totally new experience on an exciting new platform,” the post notes.