WebVR coming to Chrome to allow you to view all web pages in VR

This post was originally published on our sister site VRSource.com

Google’s investment in virtual reality is no secret. Daydream VR is its new virtual reality platform, which will be supported natively in Android Nougat. But we might not have to wait that long to get our fix of VR from Google. The latest builds of Chrome beta are now showing support for a WebVR shell which would allow you to view all existing webpages in virtual reality.

As Road to VR notes, “Chrome Beta now contains a WebVR setting which enables enhanced VR device compatibility with VR websites built against WebVR standards”. While I’ve previously tried browsing the web in VR using Samsung’s clunky browser and the Gear VR, I much prefer the idea of using Chrome.

Chrome Dev also shows evidence of a VR Shell that would allow users to view web pages with any supported VR device: Gear VR, Cardboard or Google’s own design. If you have Chrome Dev installed you can see the experimental flag at chrome://flags/#enable-vr-shell (It doesn’t do anything just now, but it should soon enough).

While WebVR already exists to some extent in other browsers, Google wants to deliver a version that lets you view not only newer “made for WebVR” sites in VR, but also all existing web pages. Chrome has largely become the default browser for the Android world, so adding WebVR support to Chrome will essentially make Google’s version of it the de facto standard as well.

Have you browsed in VR yet? How do you like it?