Add VR Browser detection for devices?

Scott Witte · April 13, 2020 at 12:26 AM

Howdy Klaus,

Please consider adding VR browsers to device detection, at least OculusBrowser and Firefox Reality (Firefox + Mobile VR) and, perhaps, Samsung's VR Browser.

Of course, this can be done by parsing the browser.useragent but it is definitely easier and more useful to have it be part of devices.

klaus.krpano · April 13, 2020 at 8:39 AM

Hi,

hmm... what's wrong the current 'mobilevr' device detection?
https://krpano.com/docu/xml/#available-devices

That device setting will be true when the user-agent contains 'mobile vr' and that's the case for the Oculus Browser, Firefox Reality and probably also for Samsung VR (not sure about that one yet, would need to recheck).

Best regards,
Klaus

Alexander360 · April 13, 2020 at 11:50 AM

Quote from klaus.krpano

Hi,
hmm... what's wrong the current 'mobilevr' device detection?
https://krpano.com/docu/xml/#available-devices
That device setting will be true when the user-agent contains 'mobile vr' and that's the case for the Oculus Browser, Firefox Reality and probably also for Samsung VR (not sure about that one yet, would need to recheck).
Best regards,
Klaus

I'm not sure if this is relevant but as I posted in the version 1.20 large post - automatic detection doesn't seem to be working in the current 1.20.5 version on the Oculus browser. The larger 'Enter VR' button no longer displays - tried with my own projects and also directly on the krpano.com demo's.

klaus.krpano · April 13, 2020 at 6:17 PM

That might be related to the latest Oculus Browser update, according to this report here the browser identifies itself now as desktop browser by default:
Oculus Browser V8.3 "kills" WebVR pages

I still need to check this and look for workarounds or other ways to allow still detecting the Oculus Browser.

Scott Witte · April 13, 2020 at 6:49 PM

Yup. By default, Oculus removes the "Mobile VR" attribute from their UA string. I will add what I have found to the other thread. But that is what originally caused my interest in this request.

As for specific VR browser detection, I might suggest there is at least as much difference between OculusBrowser and FxR as there is between Chrome and Firefox desktop. That said, all these browsers evolve so quickly maybe there is little real purpose in detection.

klaus.krpano · April 14, 2020 at 12:08 PM

Hi,

I have updated and tested my Oculus Quest now.

There is always the string 'OculusBrowser' in the user-agent, regardless if Desktop or Mobile mode.

So changing krpano that it always behaves as 'Mobile VR' browser (like when Mobile mode is enabled) would be possible.
If already tried that and it works fine.

The only disadvantage would be that then there is no way for switching to Desktop mode...
Any thoughts on that?

Best regards,
Klaus

klaus.krpano · April 14, 2020 at 12:26 PM

Or a mixed solution:
- the Oculus Browser is always detected with device.mobilevr and webvr.isvrbrowser
- but the device.mobile / device.desktop settings are based on the current browser settings

Seems to be me the best solution so far.

Scott Witte · April 14, 2020 at 5:20 PM

Hi Klaus,

Please see this post in the other thread. There I point to a couple of pages that automatically push the browser into VR mode be some as yet unexplained method. Also, I link to a page that checks various device settings.

bob1010 · June 23, 2020 at 12:27 PM

Hi Scott and Klaus,
Thought you'd find this edited fullscreen html template of interest. Alexander Popov wrote this code and has very kindly offered to share it with everyone. It solves this issue and forces the Oculus browser to always load the mobile version of the tour so that VR mode is enabled. The tour will remain in mobile mode even if the user switches back and forth from desktop to mobile mode in the Oculus browser.
Thanks for your help Alex, excellent job.

Bob.

Scott Witte · June 23, 2020 at 4:59 PM

Thanks, Bob (and Alex!),

I look forward to testing this.

Participate now!