Agenda

• VR on the Web
• Types of Viz
• Technique Issues

The Web

The Web

• Distribution
• Authoring

Distribution

• Web browser & URL
• boom we're done!
  • (not quite yet but soonish)

mad productivity of A-Frame

Why is A-Frame good?

• Works with Web infrastructure
• Not overly prescriptive
• Highly interoperable
• Highly/easily extensible (components)
  • remember VRML protos?

Authoring

• Existing non-graphics tools can be used for graphics!
• It's all HTML and the DOM down there
• aframe Inspector; CodePen; browser debugger's

Types of Visualizations

• Traditional Computer Graphics
• 360 degree images or videos
• Hybrid (CG in a video world)

Traditional Computer Graphics

http://math.nist.gov/~SRessler/aframe/eah1/STM/STMMergeMenus/STM.html​

Interactive Scanning Tunneling Microscope and Facility

360 degree images and video

http://math.nist.gov/~SRessler/aframe/eah1/imageLibrary/updatedLib.html

Visiting the NIST Library - Virtually

Hybrid CG and 360 images

Now that's ridiculous!

Technique Issues

• Immersive in app
• Immersive in Web
• Desktop (non-immersive) but usable
  • alternates to controller devices
• UI issues - selection and navigation
  • teleporting, sphere worlds, WASD
  • Boris Smus’s new Ray.js
• "On the Declarative Immersive Web" Josh Carpenter@Google 
• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ORdKs1wNe7QysRYSBtmW8LnMTFRu69gEwyOSrjIaZyA/edit?usp=sharing
•  

Menu attached to controller (hand) aka tiltbrush

Getting Around and Pointing at Stuff

• navigation
• selection

Navigation

• teleporting
• spheres to worlds
• portals

Selection

• grab with virtual hand
• raycast beam
• shoot something

Developing with helmet on

peeking out from under helmet

using the keyboard

using the mouse

Annoying Stuff

Using real hardware makes a difference

It looks simple and easy to use, but...

Where's the damn keyboard?