Building Web Apps for the Rift

"hackingbeauty" wrote:
I'm new to Rift development, and am specifically interested in building Rift applications with Web technologies (Javascript/WebGL/CSS).

Is anybody already using the Web stack to build Rift apps, or is Unity the only way to go at this time?
If the Web stack is a viable option at this time, what is the best primary resource I can consult with in order to start?

Well I'm not really sure if it's possible to access drivers via a browser, but one way of doing it is create you "App" on fullscreen and mirror it on your rift, and have some software to send in the data to your game/browser.

By data I mean head/positional tracking variables, but I expect it to be a bit slow nevertheless.

I've successfully built a functioning Rift web app (complete with headtracking) using the DK1 and the vr.js project:

https://github.com/benvanik/vr.js/

I used the chrome.usb driver (look at the experimantal/usb-driver folder). It would be better to use the chrome.hid driver, and would probably be a fun project to port the code.

Unfortunately all this might be a bit pointless because it's presently impossible to use DK2 in a web app at all, because Oculus have closed the usb driver source. IMO shutting off web development is yet another reason why that was a Very Bad Idea.

This looks like the new modern way to do it:

http://blog.tojicode.com/2014/07/bringing-vr-to-chrome.html

:)

I'm also interested in this topic. So far we've been using vr.js with the NPAPI plugin for DK1 support in https://github.com/NICTA/cesium-oculus-plugin (example usage at http://www.doarama.com).

It seems it's possible to get this working with DK2...
https://github.com/NICTA/cesium-oculus-plugin/pull/3

WebVR sounds more appealing in the longer term since it's aiming for browser integration and similar spec between FF and Chrome. Currently it's requiring a custom build of Chrome though. Is anybody on the forum actively using it and able to comment?