With the arrival of Firefox Quantum, the support for Virtual Reality applications in a browser is no longer in beta and become a standard. For us BIM models + WebVR would be the future.
So far, any test we did on WebVR was done with beta browsers Google Chromium and Firefox Nightly. In addition to the instability of the same due to the high consumption of Virtual Reality resources, we did not have a support to manage the remote controls in Unity.
Firefox has greatly facilitated this task with the incorporation of an asset for the support of the different VR device controls. Salvador de la Puente, Senior Software Engineer at IBM, is in large part responsible of this advance.
In our case, access to WebVR technology has not been easy since the limitations that still exist in this environment restrict us greatly when working with large BIM models.
Now we can work in an RV environment (webVR) from a browser and with the entire data layer of the BIM models.
The user, apart of having the scene for its control on a conventional monitor, has access to RV so you can work in an RV scene as if it were a desktop application.
Likewise, we can now load BIM models made by the manufacturer with all their data layer from a repository of BIM models. In this way from a browser we will have models updated by the manufacturer in real time, being able to visualize them in environments of Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality indistinctly.
We believe that it is an important advance when it comes to BIM models move to a user environment without dealing with the complexity of them or even to enjoy an experience of Augmented Reality without specifically having a pair of glasses.
We hope that this advance will allow us in the near future to bring the models to Augmented Reality from any device that accepts ARKit or ARCore from the phone’s own browser.
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