Bring People into VR from Web and Mobile with Web Launch for WebXR

At Meta Connect 2022, we shared major wins for WebXR developers on the Meta Quest Platform. Web experiences in the Meta Quest Browser now support capabilities like Passthrough, Scene understanding, and Spatial Anchors—Presence Platform capabilities that enable you to build immersive mixed reality experiences with WebXR.

We’re excited to see how you use these features to push what’s possible with WebXR, and we're continuing to improve how people access your websites in VR on Meta Quest. That’s why today, we’re announcing Web Launch, a new feature that lets people easily jump into VR when they’re viewing your WebXR experience on web or mobile devices. By integrating Web Launch, more people will be able to experience your WebXR experience with deeper levels of immersion on the Meta Quest Platform. Below, we dive into how Web Launch works and show you real examples featuring web-based experiences built by Matterport.

Web Launch provides a web endpoint path that you can use to let people remote-launch your web-based experience in VR. When Web Launch is integrated with your WebXR experience, people can choose to either open it immediately on their Meta Quest headset or save it to view later. Saving a website for later stores it with other saved items on a person’s profile, like screenshots. People can find their saved items when signed in in-headset or on the Meta Quest mobile app.

When people choose to open your website in VR, they’ll see a menu to select the Meta Quest device they want to use. For the best experience, we recommend opening web-based experiences on Meta Quest Pro or Meta Quest 2.

After a VR device is selected, your website will automatically open in the Meta Quest Browser in-headset—creating a direct path to your experience without added steps or search requirements. Once people put on their headset and see your website, they’ll be able to open your website in full VR for a deeper immersive experience.

To show you a real example of Web Launch, we teamed up with Matterport to highlight how easy it is for people to open their WebXR experiences in VR. Matterport is a leading digital twin platform that transforms real-world spaces into accurate, immersive 3D models used to collaborate remotely, manage facilities, market properties, and gain new insights and analytics.

Matterport’s services are leveraged by a variety of industries around the world to improve how people experience, manage, and market 3D spaces on 2D surfaces. With Web Launch, Matterport can remove the constraints of 2D surfaces to help people engage with 3D spaces on Meta Quest. The video below features an example of Web Launch featuring a 3D walkthrough of La Mivoie Penthouse built by Matterport.

The example above shows the Web Launch user journey on mobile. People can click the “View in VR” icon on the bottom right to enter the user flow for opening the website on a Meta Quest device. After a device is selected, the current URL is sent to the headset and opened in the Meta Quest Browser.

Now, when people see the 3D walkthrough of the museum in-headset, they’ll find an “Enter VR” button on their screen. When selected, the website opens in full VR, allowing people to explore the museum from a more engaging first-person perspective.

While the example above shows how Matterport leverages Web Launch, this feature offers the flexibility to integrate a VR entry point that makes sense for your WebXR experience. The web endpoint below can be used to customize your approach in triggering the VR user flow:

<a href="https://www.oculus.com/open_url/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.meta.com">Open Meta.com on your Meta Quest headset</a>

Offering people a way to see your WebXR experience at its full potential in a headset can help drive engagement, retention, and overall satisfaction. With Web Launch, viewing WebXR experiences in VR on Meta Quest headsets becomes as simple as clicking a couple buttons, helping you make a great and lasting impression with users. To get started with Web Launch, check out our documentation.

For more information on building great WebXR experiences for the Meta Quest Platform, check out our developer sessions from Meta Connect 2022.