Mozilla announced Firefox Reality (Topic)

On Tuesday, Mozilla announced a browser designed for devices in the virtual reality category. Mozilla hopes this technology will become ubiquitous in the near future.

"We believe that the future of the global web will be closely with VR and AR, this future will be embodied in browsers." The head of research and development at Mozilla writes about this in the company's blog.

Firefox Reality

Firefox Reality is not yet ready for distribution to end users, but is intended for content developers. Since Mozilla develops open source projects, this browser also has open source code. It is not yet known when the product will be ready for widespread distribution.

This is the first step in the long term to spread the new interaction option. This was written in another blog, from which you can understand that we still have new announcements.

What's up with the development

The browser will be based on the existing version of Firefox, which was named Quantum at the end of 2017. Applies the Servo rendering engine that Firefox has been running on since 2013. It is written in the Rust programming language, which was created by a research group at Mozilla. This engine replaces Gecko, which Firefox worked with before. Based on existing Firefox browser technologies, they have been enhanced with the experimental Servo web engine.

Firefox Reality currently only runs in developer mode on two Google Daydream devices and Samsung's Gear VR. There should be more of them in the future. The creators believe that their product for accessing the global network on separate head-mounted devices will be cross-platform and work on different models.

What does Mozilla do besides the browser?

Mozilla has other projects besides Firefox, but the recent results have been bleak. The organization tried to develop its own mobile operating system, but gave up this venture in early 2016. A year later, she covered up the remnants of this project, an operating system for IoT devices. Mozilla also started and ended an initiative to place ads inside the Firefox browser.

One analyst who has criticized the company in the past was not impressed by Firefox Reality either. Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates is confident in the expansion of virtual reality, but currently sees a small market that is just beginning to develop. While it is intended primarily for gamers. Browsers have nowhere to expand here.

Mozilla believes they are well positioned to enter a new market. They argue that the focus will not be on application development, but on ensuring user interaction. They also remind you that Firefox was the first browser to support WebVR.

Mozilla will have a lot of competitors here, like Google and Microsoft. The Firefox Reality code can be downloaded from GitHub.

The Topic of Article: Mozilla announced Firefox Reality.
Author: Jake Pinkman