Hi,
I was wondering what kind of short to medium term plans the PlayCanvas in terms of VR support. There is no denying the usefulness of the current WebVR scripts but there are still a couple of worrying things on the horizon. The ones that come to mind at the moment are:
Framerate: PlayCanvas targets 60fps which is too slow for VR, it needs to be at least 90fps
Performance: Obviously running at 90fps and higher is going to a challenge on the web but there are already demonstrations on webvr.info of applications running at 90fps. Web Engines will need to be highly optimized in order to achieve these kind of frame rates.
Controllers: The controllers for VR are 6Dof controllers with multiple buttons, button values , velocity and acceleration.
Competition: aFrame is growing fast, although it doesn’t have editing tools it is building up a large library of plug and play components which extend the framework significantly and they are specifically targeting the rift/hive and 6dof controllers (from what I can tell from various posts they think that ‘Flat’ webGL games never really gained any success and they are considering dropping support for them and going down a pure VR route).
At the moment it feels like PlayCanvas is better at creating rich VR experiences at the moment but aFrame is gaining ground very quickly and I believe they will both be competing in the same space.
How does the PlayCanvas team feel about the onslaught of VR and what are their plan/priorities for VR over the coming year?
Framerate: PlayCanvas targets 60fps which is too slow for VR, it needs to be at least 90fps
PlayCanvas doesn’t target 60fps but rather runs as fast and the browser allows. When running in non-VR mode, browsers limit web applications to 60fps (via the requestAnimationFrame function which PlayCanvas uses here). When you use PlayCanvas’ WebVR plugin (or the WebVR Starter Kit), a version of requestAnimationFrame on the VRDisplay interface is called instead. This enables your PlayCanvas app to match the refresh rate of the HMD. In the case of retail Vive and Rift units, this is 90Hz, but it could be anything.
Web Engines will need to be highly optimized in order to achieve these kind of frame rates.
Agreed! PlayCanvas has had years of optimization and I’m confident that it’s one of the fastest (if not the fastest) WebGL engine around. The ‘Orange Room VR’ demo cruises along nicely at 90Hz on a Vive.
aFrame is growing fast
aFrame looks interesting and we’re close friends with Mozilla. Actually, it was Mozilla that launched PlayCanvas into the open source world! But, ultimately, Mozilla (and other open source teams) have struggled to step beyond the runtime side of things and develop awesome tools. There’s a number of reasons for this. But generally, it’s hard. If building a decent engine wasn’t hard enough, building good tools means managing a highly coordinated team (not just coders, but UI/UX people too) that is working closely with many users to ensure what is built is fit for production. It involves a huge amount of know-how (I’ve been building game development tools for 20 years now) and iteration. This is how we’ve built the Editor. Doing that in an open source context, where development is not actually funded directly, is harder. Seriously, no other browser based Editor comes close to the PlayCanvas Editor right now (IMHO).
At the moment it feels like PlayCanvas is better at creating rich VR experiences at the moment but aFrame is gaining ground very quickly and I believe they will both be competing in the same space.
I don’t personally see aFrame as a competitor of PlayCanvas. Maybe some day, but not now. Again, to emphasize, my opinion.
How does the PlayCanvas team feel about the onslaught of VR and what are their plan/priorities for VR over the coming year?
We are super-excited about VR! It’s a major theme in our development plans. Expect to see more and more integrated VR support built directly into the Editor in the coming weeks and months. We see PlayCanvas as being the de facto place for developers to build and publish WebVR content.It’s not an afterthought.
Wonderful and detailed answer! many thanks. I completely agree that there is nothing out there that targets VR on the web any better. Best of luck to the PlayCanvas team in the coming months. It’s going to be an exciting ride!
