Building a Better Web
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Discover the WebXR Device API (sponsored by Intel)

Alexis Menard (Intel)
9:50am–10:30am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Sponsored, Web Foundations: CSS, HTML, JS, Node
 Location: 211 C/D
Secondary topics:  Hands-on, Technical
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Who is this presentation for?

  • Frontent engineers, software developers, VR designers, and UI/UX designers

Prerequisite knowledge

  • A working knowledge of JavaScript (The WebXR Device API is a JavaScript API.)
  • Familiarity with requestAnimationFrame and animation loop
  • A basic understanding of WebGL and VR (useful but not required)

What you'll learn

  • Learn how to build a VR experience on the web from scratch
  • Understand VR concepts and apply them with WebXR Device API
  • Discover where the VR market is heading
  • Learn how to port your WebVR 1.1 experience

Description

Virtual and augmented reality are gaining momentum among consumers, especially with the release of cheaper VR and AR entertainment solutions. One of the main challenges for AR/VR is content delivery, which requires giant downloads and complicated app store installation steps and often involves proprietary stacks that lock users to a particular vendor. Leading VR/AR companies have spent significant resources to create content, yet it hasn’t proliferated because it was cumbersome for developers to go to market (e.g., multiple vendors, multiple SDKs, and the need for extensive skillsets).

The WebXR Device API (formerly known as WebVR 2.0) is a way to address this challenge. It leverages the power of the WebPlatform—low friction, discoverability, indexing, and an open and easy development environment—to help deliver rich and entertaining portable experiences. The web doesn’t pose gatekeepers; you can deploy or instantly update a virtual reality experience on your website. The WebXR Device API allows developers to easily create virtual experiences that can be seamlessly deployed across different operating systems and browsers without compromising capabilities.

Alexis Menard offers an overview of the WebXR Device API and explains how to build a VR experience on the web from scratch. You’ll get familiar with VR concepts, learn how to use them with the WebXR Device API, and discover how to port your existing WebVR 1.1 experience if you already have one.

This session is sponsored by Intel.

Photo of Alexis Menard

Alexis Menard

Intel

Alexis Menard is a software engineer at Intel’s Open Source Technology Center in Portland, Oregon. His main focus is on the ever-evolving WebPlatform, which includes work on W3C standards as well as Blink/Chromium. In the latter projects, he serves as both developer and code reviewer. Alexis also worked on Crosswalk, an HTML5 runtime/webview for Android, where he did a bit of everything. Prior to Intel, Alexis worked on QtWebKit and WebKit at the Brazilian Nokia research center (INdT) and on the Qt framework as a part of Nokia (former Trolltech). He is also a former KDE contributor, contributing mostly to Plasma, the desktop shell of KDE.