1196672 - [meta] Implement support for motion controllers

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: WebVR, defect)

Description

[Josh Carpenter [:jcarpenter]]

Devices like the Oculus Touch, Vive controllers and Nod Backspin are "motion controllers" that accurately capture the user's physical movements in 3D space. Motion control is emerging as perhaps the mouse of VR, so we want to support these devices in WebVR.

Potential solutions being discussed include:

* Adding connect/disconnect events to the WebVR API
* Building on top of the Gamepad API

Comment 1

[Christopher Van Wiemeersch [:cvan]]

There's been WIP support for OpenVR Gamepads (Vive controllers) added to the experimental WebVR branch of Chromium: https://twitter.com/Tojiro/status/686398197237854208

Worth following the conversation and links there.

Comment 2

[Christopher Van Wiemeersch [:cvan]]

Also related: https://github.com/w3c/gamepad/issues/18

Comment 3

[:kip (Kearwood Gilbert)]

The WebVR 1.0 API now defines a point for association between motion controllers and the VR display (HMD):

https://mozvr.github.io/webvr-spec/

It will still be necessary to design the WebIDL interface to return the position, orientation, and capabilities of the motion controller.

Perhaps we could follow the pattern in the WebVR 1.0 API, by returning a 3-entry Float32Array for the position and a 4-entry quaternion Float32Array for the orientation.  These could be null if the sensors could not acquire the position or orientation.  A separate set of boolean values (i.e. HasOrientation and HasPosition) should be set to indicate the presence of the sensor, even if it is unable to acquire the data at the current moment in time.

Comment 4

[:kip (Kearwood Gilbert)]

Perhaps this bug should be turned in to a meta bug and broken down into separate bugs to track the WebIDL interface design / standardization, implementation of Oculus Touch controllers, and Implementation of HTC Vive controllers.

Comment 5

[:kip (Kearwood Gilbert)]

Oculus remote is not a "motion controller", removing dependency.
Rest of these are all implemented now, closing meta bug.