In browser social VR is interesting to me because it seems like an easy way to get VR content in front of your audience. Most people probably don’t want a VR experience when browsing the web, but I feel one day it could become the norm. Because of this I’ve been doing a lot of research in webXR and looking at other in browser VR experiences. I’ve been aware of Mozilla Hubs for a while, but only now have I decided to take a look at it.

First Impressions

To begin, I decided to take a look at their creator options. To me, a social VR platform is useless if I can’t upload my own content. I’m a 3D modeler and creating VR worlds is all I want to do. Mozilla Hubs allows you to do that, which is great. They use an in browser 3D editor called Spoke. It seemed simple to navigate and I didn’t have much trouble moving around in it. You are given an option to start from a template or upload your own using a glb file. It seemed similar to Oculus Home’s method. Upload a glb file and edit the file within their system. Though Hubs seems to give you even more control. They do limit you to a 150mb file.

I was able to join a room on desktop. I wanted to just move around in the browser, but my pc kept auto starting steam VR, which would be great if I wanted to use it, but I didn’t. Other than steam VR being a bit annoying, I was able to get into a room fairly easily. Moving around was simple and the controls were pretty straight forward. I decided to experience it using my quest.

In the Quest, I downloaded the Mozilla browser app. In the app, I can go to the Hubs Mozilla site and launch the rooms like any webXR experience. Just press the VR button. The movement controls were just as simple in VR. In the room, you can bring in 3D models and view content in the space. This is the part that felt clunky to me. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of control with the 3D models and tools that I brought into the space.

All in all, I enjoyed my experience. It seems like it could be very useful for presenting information. You can invite people to a room with a link and people can join using a room code. I plan on creating an environment to work in Hubs to test out its features.