Edit: Try out the program by downloading it here. You don't need VR goggles to use it, but it looks ***** cool if you use them. /EDIT

TL- DR: A programmer named James McCrae is designing a virtual reality web browser where one uses HTML web pages to create virtual rooms. It's easy to see Ankiweb or RevTK having a review link that generates the correct HTML so that you can review your cards in Virtual Reality.

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If you're not aware, ever since April of last year a company called Oculus has been selling developer versions of affordable and effective virtual reality head mounted displays called The Rift. During this time, Oculus has been improving their designs for a future consumer release. By affordable I mean $300 and by effective I mean a 90 degree field of view per eye with a 525 pixel diameter per eye in addition to 50ms latency in head tracking. That's for the developer version that anyone can get now, and the consumer version will be much better than that.

Thanks to the developer kits, other companies and individual programmers have been able to design lots of different applications that utilize VR HMDs. This has ranged from movie viewing, travel, tourism, games, perception shifts, etc with varying degrees and effectiveness and wow factor.

Since last year, one of those programmers name James McCrae has been developing a VR web browser that he has called FireBox. Until recently, it has been a Linux release so I never tried it out. However, once he released a windows version I immediately saw that this was a great program. At first, procedurally generated a room using any websites HTML code and generated a door for the hyperlinks and a image on the wall for any graphics. Now, he has improved it so that you can create rooms of your choosing and select how the general layout can be.

Here's a sample video. The distorted duel image is easily viewable when you wear an Oculus Rift. While it may not seem that impressive, everything looks huge and solid when you view them with the goggles. The designer of the program is showing off some of his models, but the ver 11 release demonstrated having linked pages that created a virtual museum of 3D planar figures.

That virtual museum is what got me excited. Given that this program uses HTML, it's not a great leap that Ankisrs and Reviewing the Kanji websites can allow the option to review your cards in virtual reality. Instead of a card popping up on a screen, you could be sitting in the middle of a room with larger than life images appearing around you. Hell, instead of staying in one room, you could move room to room where each room is the next card in your review deck.

Understand that all this is very early especially on the VR Web Browser side of things. It stands to reason that later iterations will allow more dynamic interactions for web designers and users. I also don't know if reviewing in a virtual world would be more effective then watching a screen. All I do know is that the options and possibilities have been expanded a great degree in recent weeks and months.

[ファブリス]

That's pretty cool. I think the potential for kanji learning is rather limited though. But for language learning it could be a great way to simulate real life situations to practice production?

To me this particular demonstration is more akin to the sites that turn Wikipedia pages into a multimedia experience, with a voice over narration, a slideshow etc.

I'm still kind of on the fence about Oculus. On one hand I think it's going to be awesome for gaming, on the other hand I think a truly 3D monitor would be just as amazing. If the monitor could be like a window to another world, that it actually looks as if you are peering through a portal to a 3D world. I think that would have had far greater application for all types of videogames whereas Oculus is going to excel at some genres and not so much at others. We'll see I guess.

Information at the speed of... walking. It reminds me of people trying to make shopping sites into VR shopping malls because walking around in virtual reality to check out products on virtual shelves is "the future". Once you get past the novelty factor though, even good old HTML in your browser is already a far superior way to navigate information than any sort of walking around, be it in VR or in real life.

I think navigating the Web without a simulated walking physical body is liberating, it makes everything faster and more efficient than real life. VR is trying to put the user back into a physical body. HTML is already much more efficient at delivering information to the brain at the speed of a click.

[ファブリス]

Well one thing's for sure. Japan is going to town with Oculus. Sunny Beach 4 or something.

Nukemarine Wrote:That virtual museum is what got me excited. Given that this program uses HTML, it's not a great leap that Ankisrs and Reviewing the Kanji websites can allow the option to review your cards in virtual reality. Instead of a card popping up on a screen, you could be sitting in the middle of a room with larger than life images appearing around you. Hell, instead of staying in one room, you could move room to room where each room is the next card in your review deck.

Reviewing Anki in this way sounds amazing (just for a bit of novelty fun of course).
A torture room of kanji conjures an amusing image too.

ファブリス Wrote:That's pretty cool. I think the potential for kanji learning is rather limited though. But for language learning it could be a great way to simulate real life situations to practice production?

To me this particular demonstration is more akin to the sites that turn Wikipedia pages into a multimedia experience, with a voice over narration, a slideshow etc.

I'm still kind of on the fence about Oculus. On one hand I think it's going to be awesome for gaming, on the other hand I think a truly 3D monitor would be just as amazing. If the monitor could be like a window to another world, that it actually looks as if you are peering through a portal to a 3D world. I think that would have had far greater application for all types of videogames whereas Oculus is going to excel at some genres and not so much at others. We'll see I guess.

What's cool is that it's possible now and is not some imaginary thought experiment. I'll agree that at first glance it sounds like a waste of time. Then you wonder: in VR, I can cut off my surrounding distractions. What if I create my ideal review/study environment? As for Kanji is particular, given our belief in visual stories it's no big leap to assume somebody with time on their hands can create 3D objects to generate the visual stories for each kanji. In addition, in time one can create a virtual Memory Palace which can help in kanji learning.

You make a great point about Wikipedia and I can see people creating a VR version of some Wiki entries. Though it's not in the video, the creator of FireBox made more webpages, each with planar statues like the Bee and the Dino with modest info in each room. It's no great leap that Wiki entry architects would do the same. A big thing would be the 360 degree photos (imagine Google Street Viewer) that feels like you're standing inside that location. It's something that has to be experienced that understand.

As for getting the Oculus Rift, I'm hesitant to encourage at the moment. Only the developer kit is available and it's almost 18 month old tech. Yeah, it's probably the best VR tech available at such a low price, but the consumer release is getting closer to being officially announced. If you get a chance, test it out if someone can demo it for you. From personal experience, you can use it for much, much more than games. I say this as I don't see myself as much of a gamer, so I have more fun with the video player and exploration type demos for it.

Nukemarine Wrote:TL- DR: A programmer named James McCrae is designing a virtual reality web browser where one uses HTML web pages to create virtual rooms. It's easy to see Ankiweb or RevTK having a review link that generates the correct HTML so that you can review your cards in Virtual Reality.

Unfortunately, HTML and CSS are a seriously limited technology. Not compatible with the future, imho.

And yes, I realize that's an odd opinion to hold, given how widespread they are at the moment (and given that they've just finished wiping the floor with Flash). But I honestly believe that that's mostly due to Javascript, and that HTML and CSS are an extremely flawed system, in need of replacing before we attempt to build this fancy future you're describing.

shinsen Wrote:Information at the speed of... walking. It reminds me of people trying to make shopping sites into VR shopping malls because walking around in virtual reality to check out products on virtual shelves is "the future". Once you get past the novelty factor though, even good old HTML in your browser is already a far superior way to navigate information than any sort of walking around, be it in VR or in real life.

I think navigating the Web without a simulated walking physical body is liberating, it makes everything faster and more efficient than real life. VR is trying to put the user back into a physical body. HTML is already much more efficient at delivering information to the brain at the speed of a click.

I'm assuming that these VR shopping malls were something like Google Street View on a normal PC, where it's like a Doom but you're taking down sales instead of demons? The only way to look around would be to keep your head still, eyes fixed on the screen and move your mouse around a image on a spherical projection? If that were the case, yes, I understand why that fails because it is annoying.

Take that same idea, adapt it for virtual reality goggles like the Rift and now you're looking around then something changes. You start noticing details. Book titles, photos and signs start grabbing your attention. This has happened to me using street view, playing Half Life 2, the Redroom demo (detailed bedroom and walkin closet of a furnished house) or even Dear Esther. There's something to be said about catering to our binocular vision combined with eye and head movement that cannot be replicated on a normal PC screen no matter the size or pixel count.

Your last point may be trying to put too much on VR. There will be a convenience that a flat screen browser can offer that a VR browser cannot. The reverse will also be true. Navigating a Street View on your browser is an ok experience. Navigating it in VR has brought tears to some people, such as when they visited their home address and could stand up and look around. Internet stores can either show you a picture of a sofa, or actually put it in VR space of a VR representation of your living room and you can see how it'll match or not. It's not always about how fast you can get to the next paragraph or page. VR can deliver size, scale and presence which is an experience that cannot be transmitted on a 2D screen or a 3D monitor.

Basically, the browsers will each have their strengths and weaknesses. It'll be up to creative folks to make products that respect those ideas. Anyone that just tries to jam a 2D webpage into a VR room is going to fail and fail bad.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:TL- DR: A programmer named James McCrae is designing a virtual reality web browser where one uses HTML web pages to create virtual rooms. It's easy to see Ankiweb or RevTK having a review link that generates the correct HTML so that you can review your cards in Virtual Reality.

Unfortunately, HTML and CSS are a seriously limited technology. Not compatible with the future, imho.

And yes, I realize that's an odd opinion to hold, given how widespread they are at the moment (and given that they've just finished wiping the floor with Flash). But I honestly believe that that's mostly due to Javascript, and that HTML and CSS are an extremely flawed system, in need of replacing before we attempt to build this fancy future you're describing.

On the developer's thread, he mentions something along this line. Apparently the is VTML and other languages that's more suited for putting objects in a 3D space. I don't know if even those are efficient enough to make for a suitable experience. This is all very, very early but I just like that the potential is already popping up.

Knowing Valve and Oculus are always working on new stuff (people that signed NDAs all rave about how we haven't seen anything yet), they probably have been working on similar VR browsers in secret. Valve already released a Steam VR that allows browsing while wearing VR headsets, but really it's just a 2D screen projected onto a virtual cylinder surface. However, they've held a Steam Dev Days meeting and showed off some other experiences. Perhaps that new language you're talking about is already being designed.

I'm bumping this given that the creator of the program has been improving on his program. He now allows HTML code to be put inside a webpage that normal browsers would ignore but FireBox would recognize. I honestly think that with a modest amount of effort both RevTK and Ankiweb can be displayed in virtual reality on this browser.

Try it yourself as it'll play like a first person game if you don't have Oculus Rift goggles. Download the recent release of the program from here and check out how the two sites that the owners have added FireBox HTML to their code looks like. One is http://www.drashvr.com/ which belongs to the guy that made Titans of Space which is an amazing VR tour around the solar system which he brought in small part into a FireBox web page.

I do believe there is serious potential here.