It seems to me that as the webVR spec settles in there is a huge market in web developers that are going to want some easy tool to build VR experiences. Playcanvas (assuming ongoing issues can be resolved) seems to be in a prime position to tap this market. Although there are tools out there like aframe which allow you to create VR apps using markup they don’t have the rich tools that PlayCanvas has to be able to visualize and modify the play space. Even though they are working on an “Editor” for aFrame it’s probably going to be some time away before it could compete. The desktop market for VR is already Unity and UE4 and I doubt any other engines will make much of an impact. The webVR market still experimental but exploding in pace and I would lay odds that the winners in this space will be made in the next 12 months.
This echoes my feelings about discovering PlayCanvas. The visual editor makes it better to design for compared to aFrame, but the hangups you referred to (for me) are:
- Setting double camera for Google Cardboard
- Setting focal distance
- Or allowing it to load in the Google Cardboard app would likely solve the second one
Hi @creg
Can you explain a bit more about your issues using PlayCanvas? Are you having trouble getting the VR starter kit working?
We’re currently working on the latest WebVR spec support, the latest code is here: https://github.com/playcanvas/webvr. It’s working great on the desktop systems, but I’m still working out the kinks on mobile before we update the starter kit and tutorials.
It would be great to get some more feedback on the WIP build. I’m currently working with the Google guys to figure out the problems on Cardboard.
Hi @dave
I’m really thrilled about the platform but in the demos and tests I ran I was either able to split the camera view for cardboard (beach scene with shapes orbiting) or use the gyroscope movement (monkeys in the boxes)… but I could not get both to happen.
Thanks for your quick response!
Hi,
I terms of the HTC Vive the only burning issue I have at the moment is the problem of no sound. It seems to effect anything I am playing on playcanvas (not just the VR based stuff) on Chrome Experimental. Other websites like youtube seem to work fine and play through the Vive but playcanvas projects don’t. At the moment I am not sure if it is a PlayCanvas issue, or Chrome Issue , or Local Issue. But because my ultimate aim is using it for presentations with voice overs its effectively a non starter at the moment. Does the playcanvas team have a HTC vive setup? I could really do with someone seeing if they have similar problems in case my problem is only a local one.
I have another smaller issue with the VR mode in that it doesn’t seem to support room scale to well. I know there are demo examples on webvr.info and one of them shows the differences with room scale. So for the VR mode to work well it really need to be room scale aware.
aFrame is moving very fast and it’s going to be important for playcanvas to keep up. Currently there are no audio problems on aFrame and there are no room scale issues either. Their editor is apparently in Beta phase although I have not seen it yet. Yesterday I saw someone create a application to play sound and show album covers from spotify’s api in less than 50 lines of code. Playcanvas has loads of features it lacks (at the moment) so it just needs to get the issues out of the way to attract and keep developers.