Firefox 55 Arrives Tomorrow With VR Support For Oculus Rift And HTC Vive
Mozilla says that its current implementation of WebVR will be supported on both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets. The company describes WebVR, writing:
WebVR transforms VR into a first-class experience on the web, giving it the infinite possibilities found in the openness and interoperability of the Web Platform. When coupled with WebGL to render 3D graphics, these APIs transform the browser into a platform that allows VR content to be published to the Web and instantaneously consumed from any capable VR device.
Mozilla hopes that by adopting the WebVR standard, it will eventually allow Firefox to support additional hardware including Windows Mixed Reality, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and Google Cardboard headsets. For those keeping score, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge already support WebVR.
Another big update coming with Firefox 55 is Firefox Screenshots. This is considered a premiere “front end” feature for Firefox and allows you to not only capture screenshots, but share them without having to exit the browser. Mozilla explains, “With Firefox Screenshots, you can easily capture an element on screen, an arbitrary region, the visible page, or the complete page including parts scrolled off screen.”
Screenshots is only being rolled out in a limited capacity initially, so you may or may not see it when you update your browser tomorrow.
In addition, Firefox 55 includes a new Performance section that resides within Settings. This allows you to enable hardware acceleration, and limit the number of processes that can run on the browser. There are also some custom shortcuts available when using Firefox in OS X and the Sidebar can now be moved to the right-hand side of the screen.
If you’re impatient, and don’t want to wait on Firefox’s built-in update mechanism to upgrade you to version 55, you can download it right now direct from Mozilla’s FTP site.
