“While experiencing VR content in a headset will be the richest, most immersive way to consume it, seeing the content in 2D will be a gateway experience for users and could result in accelerated adoption of VR hardware and VR ecosystem growth as a whole.” Megan Lindsay, Product Manager Chrome VR, told me. If you reframe your thinking to look at this form of consumption as an opportunity, then you’ve just instantly expanded your market to reach billions of smartphone and desktop users who can all access your content – now. The magic window or screen viewing of immersive content effectively gets the VR industry’s foot in the door in a very unique way. Figure 1 – Magic window on a variety of screens and devices (credit: Ada Rose Edwards) “So 85% consume WebVR experiences from our site without any headset.”īut isn’t that a bad thing? No, it’s actually awesome. That number has remained stable for a while, haven’t seen a big change in the last year or so.” Antti Jäderholm, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Vizor, told me.
“We see that currently about 15 percent of viewers view the experiences in VR. Case in point is Vizor, one of the most popular and easiest platforms for creating and publishing WebVR content, which recently raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by The Venture Reality Fund and co-led by Inventure. In fact, most WebVR content is already being consumed with 2D screens rather than headsets. You can pan around your smartphone in the air and the content will be responsive, in a similar way to what we’re already accustomed to when viewing 360-degree photos and films.
Although the obvious intent is for you to experience that content with a VR headset, you don’t necessarily need one. Unlike other types of VR, you can instantly load WebVR content simply by grabbing the URL. The next major point I want to turn your attention to is the ‘magic window’ that allows WebVR content to be consumed by any smartphone or desktop user. I’ve covered the WebVR space from various angles recently, arguing that it’s the most practical and accessible way to consume VR, that it’s now being increasingly prioritized and supported by the top VR players and browsers, and how it enjoys the unique role of enabling the next iteration of the Internet.