Mozilla launches Oculus Rift-compatible MozVR.com

Mozilla has made good on its promise to investigate how to tie virtual reality into the browsing experience, launching a new site - MozVR.com - dedicated to Oculus Rift owners.

Mozilla engineer Vladimir Vukićević revealed his project to integrate virtual reality hardware into the Firefox browser, starting with the popular crowd-funded and now Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, back in June. 'Could we not expand the Web to include the immersive elements of a fully three-dimensional virtual universe,' Vukićević asked at the time, releasing a raft of alpha-status add-ons to enable WebGL to render and output 3D content to virtual reality hardware from within the browser. 'Is it possible for the Web to evolve to become the Metaverse that Stephenson envisioned?'

Vukićević's work is now available as a more polished proof-of-concept collection of technology demonstration packages, on a dedicated website dubbed MozVR.com. These demos are accessible through a three-dimensional Rift-compatible user interface, and include a fly-through of coastal British Columbia, a visualisation of data presented as art, a Leap Motion-compatible motion control demo, and a streaming version of Talk Chat Show Thing - the only talk show, the team crows, filmed in VR.

Those wanting to take advantage of the new site will require an Oculus Rift headset along with a VR-enabled Firefox or Chromium build. 'We are using the Rift as our initial test and development device,' the team explained in the site's launch announcement, 'but are committed to device-agnostic Web VR, with support for additional devices coming soon.'