Immersive Web Weekly

Issue #042, March 16, 2021, ImmersiveWebWeekly.com

This week brought an amazing amount of live performances to the web, including the Fifth Wall Forum's REVEAL event (covered here by Kent Bye), a well funded and attended performance from The Royal Shakespeare Company, and an expanded virtual cinema program at SXSW.
Cake on the makeup, double check your stage marks, and ignite the lime lights because it's time for another issue of the Immersive Web Weekly!

- Trevor Flowers from Transmutable

Molecule Modeling Magnificently Manifests

Since we covered the Virtual Modeling Kit (an AR science kit for exploring chemistry) in issue 30 it has improved quite a bit, adding higher quality graphics, better physical simulation, and a re-imagined user experience.

Google's <model-viewer> Works Around Chrome

Google's Model Viewer Team recommended that users upgrade to their new version which plugs a significant memory leak and works around an intermittent WebXR rendering bug in Chrome.

library custom web component github.com Google

Overcome Algorithm Aversion

For all emerging technologists working at the intersection of XR and AI, two behavioral scientists are hosting a free workshop on why people trust other humans more than algorithmic models, even when the algorithm objectively outperforms the human. Come learn 3 Principles of human centered algorithm design, strategies to overcome algorithm aversion, and more.

The workshop runs on April 8th and tickets are free.

Volumetric Video in WebXR

A new demo from the production team at 4Dviews shows that volumetric capture and distribution workflows are coming to the web.

volumetric video 4dviews.com 4Dviews

Five Thousand Dream Online

Last week live theater took a big step with the Audience of the Future Consortium and the Royal Shakespeare Company's live interactive retelling of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" booking more than five thousand participants for one show. The company's players puppeted digital characters on a fully digital stage that the audience accessed via their web browsers. With this level of community and financial support I wonder how soon we will be able to view this quality of performance using WebXR.

VR-Viz

VR-Viz is an open source project to provide React components for data visualization in WebVR:

It combines A-Frame with React (for DOM manipulation) and D3 (for data visualization). It's JSON syntax for generating visualizations is inspired by Vega-Lite.

FusedVR Unity WebXR

Vasanth Mohan, aka Fuseman, released a step-by-step walk-through in which he sets up Unity and Node.js for a new immersive web app:

Using WebGL and the De-Panther Fork of Mozilla's Unity WebXR Exporter, we will be taking a look at how to setup your first WebXR project exported from Unity. Step by step, we will be importing in De-Panther's WebXR Github Repo and Interaction system and then using the Desert Sample Scene as our base project. From there, we will use WebGL with the Unity WebXR Exporter that is part of XR Management in order to create an HTML 5 build. And then finally, we will need to setup an HTTPS Web Server with npm in order to view project from Oculus Quest.