A release of the Wolvic web browser has been published, intended for use in augmented and virtual reality systems. The project continues the development of the Firefox Reality browser, previously developed by Mozilla. After the Firefox Reality codebase stagnated within the Wolvic project, its development was continued by Igalia, known for its participation in the development of such free projects as GNOME, GTK, WebKitGTK, Epiphany, GStreamer, Wine, Mesa and freedesktop.org. Wolvic code is written in Java and C++, and is licensed under the MPLv2 license. Ready-made assemblies are generated for the Android platform. Supports work with Oculus, Huawei VR Glass, HTC Vive Focus, Pico Neo and Lynx 3D helmets (the browser is also being ported for Qualcomm and Lenovo devices).
The browser uses the GeckoView web engine, a variant of Mozilla's Gecko engine packaged as a separate library that can be updated independently. Management is carried out through a fundamentally different three-dimensional user interface, which allows you to navigate through sites within the virtual world or as part of augmented reality systems. In addition to a 3D helmet-driven interface that lets you view traditional 3D pages, web developers can use the WebXR, WebAR, and WebVR APIs to create custom 360D web applications that interact in virtual space. It also supports viewing spatial videos shot in XNUMX-degree mode in a XNUMXD helmet.
VR controllers are used for navigation, and a virtual or real keyboard is used to enter data into web forms. In addition, a voice input system is offered for user interaction, which makes it possible to fill out forms and send search queries using the speech recognition engine developed in Mozilla. As a home page, the browser provides an interface for accessing selected content and navigating through a collection of 3D-adapted games, web applications, 3D models, and XNUMXD videos.
In the new version:
- The full-screen video playback mode in a 3D environment has been significantly improved - the browser interface disappears and something similar to a virtual cinema appears. The area surrounding the virtual movie screen is darkened, similar to turning off the lights in a movie theater, so as not to distract attention from the viewing experience.
- The bookmark management interface provides the display of site icons (favicon) for a more visual selection of bookmarks.
- For 3D helmets manufactured by Huawei, supplied with the Harmony 3.0 platform (Huawei Android edition), multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA, Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing) is enabled by default, which significantly improves rendering quality.
- For Huawei devices, when entering a WebXR session, images of the controllers are shown and a hint is displayed on what to click to exit the session.
- For Huawei controllers with 3 and 6 degrees of freedom (3DoF and 6DoF), a common hybrid package has been prepared (previously, due to limitations of the Huawei VR SDK, separate versions were supplied for them).
- Resolved issues with browser closing when exiting Huawei security zone and fixed crash when clicking on "mailto:" links.
Source: opennet.ru