Web Browsers on Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality Devices

Head-mounted virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality devices have received many browsers over the years. Fundamentally, these browsers present a different user experience to browsers on other devices. They’re a very different medium, requiring different considerations and with very different requirements, constraints, considerations, and technologies. Unlike browsers for other platforms, browsers for virtual reality need to consider a spatial context. Interfaces are not limited to a single surface, or even to multiple surfaces. The interface can wrap around the user, enveloping them, be scaled to a screen the size of the moon, or shrunk down infinitesimally small. The screen can curve or lie flat. A screen can be one of a thousand orbiting a user, and it can be grabbed, resized, and thrown around at will. For as much as a webpage might be viewed in a living room via passthrough, it might be viewed from a lawn chair on the moon. A browser viewport is much more abstract of…