Apr 24, 2023

Empowering MR Development in WebXR: Immersive Web Emulator v1.2 & Reality Accelerator Toolkit Beta

Iteration is an invaluable part of the development process, and that’s why we’re continuing to work on tools to help developers drive improvements, innovate, and deliver polished experiences. Earlier this year, we released the Immersive Web Emulator, giving you a more efficient way to iterate while building WebXR-based experiences. Today, we’re thrilled to deliver more emulatable features with our v1.2 update and the first public beta of the Reality Accelerator Toolkit, a new library designed to help you create outstanding mixed reality WebXR experiences by simplifying the integration of mixed reality features into your WebXR app.

WebXR developers with all levels of experience can start using these tools today to elevate their mixed reality projects with WebXR and accelerate their workflow. Let’s dive into the details.

Immersive Web Emulator v1.2 Update: Completing the Mixed Reality Suite

The Immersive Web Emulator v1.2 update builds upon the existing mixed reality features by adding anchor persistence and hit-test feature support. With persistent anchors saved per origin and persisting across sessions, you can now create WebXR experiences that remember spatial anchors between sessions. Meanwhile, the hit-test feature returns results within the user-defined, emulated XR environment, further enhancing the emulator's utility.

Reality Accelerator Toolkit Public Beta: Simplifying WebXR Integration

The Reality Accelerator Toolkit is a WebXR utility library designed to make integrating mixed reality features in web apps a breeze. The Accelerator is compatible with three.js 3D library, which bridges the gap between low-level WebXR APIs and higher-level APIs from three.js.

Key features of Reality Accelerator Toolkit include:

Seamless integration with three.js
Automatic tracking and updating of detected planes and anchors
Real-world hit-test target translation to Object3D instances in the three.js scene

The Accelerator creates a hit-test target, which is an empty object3D that moves wherever the hit-test intersect is located. You can use this to attach things such as a reticle, or just read transform data of the intersect.

Extensible design for future compatibility with other 3D libraries

Reality Accelerator Toolkit enables anchors that persist across sessions

Creating a hit-test target with Reality Accelerator Toolkit

Reality Accelerator Toolkit automatically detects and tracks planes

Empowering Developers and Beyond

With the release of the Immersive Web Emulator’s v1.2 update and the Reality Accelerator Toolkit public beta, we hope to make it easier for you to create mixed reality WebXR experiences in fewer steps and with deeper levels of immersion.

We’re eager to see what the WebXR developer community can create using these new tools and resources, and we encourage you to submit your WebXR experiences to be featured on the Meta Quest Browser. If you have feedback, be sure to let us know—your contributions will help to improve and shape the future of our suite of developer tools, including both the Immersive Web Emulator and Reality Accelerator Toolkit.

Get started by downloading the Immersive Web Emulator v1.2 extension on Chrome Store or Edge Add-ons and find detailed instructions on GitHub. For more information on the Reality Accelerator Toolkit Beta today, click here.

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