Virtual Reality, WebXR, and Samsung Internet
Ada Rose Cannon
Web Developer Advocate
A major update for VR and the web
Hi! I’m Ada Rose Cannon. As well as being a Developer Advocate for the web browser, Samsung Internet, I am a co-chair of the W3C Immersive Web Working Group and Community Group. These two groups work together to produce the WebXR Device API and related specifications.
As you can imagine, getting WebXR support in Samsung Internet is pretty close to my heart.
I am pleased to say that since Samsung Internet 11.2, we have initial support for WebXR in our browser. You can view the full support table here. WebXR is a very large API with many modules still being worked out. The core module which is in a stable state is for supporting VR.
You may be thinking that VR in the web is old news. At Samsung, we have supported the WebVR API for years. The WebVR device API is now being deprecated since it had some core issues preventing it from being future proof. WebXR is being designed to replace WebVR and reach further to support many features WebVR was unable to such as Augmented Reality and better support for gamepads.
If you have been supporting a website or JavaScript library designed around WebVR, now is the to migrate it to WebXR to ensure it isn’t broken in the near future.
Our current support for WebXR is to use the Android VR system to render the experience side by side in the browser so it can be used with cardboard VR devices.
WebXR on Android (Link to Demo)
Looking to the future for Samsung Internet, we are working on supporting the AR portions of the WebXR device API so you can build websites which place virtual objects into the user’s environment. For more news about WebXR on Samsung Internet, please follow us on Twitter (@SamsungInternet) or keep an eye on https://immersiveweb.dev.
