Popular:
 Building Resilient Systems on AWS: Learn how to design and implement a resilient, highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on AWS.

Detect WebVR Support with JavaScript

By  on  
Note:  This blog post is no longer accurate as the API has changed.  Instead, take the time to read How to Detect XR Support with JavaScript.
It's been two years since I was heavily involved with WebVR at Mozilla but, despite not contributing every day, I can see VR making leaps and bounds, from Firefox making an increased effort to Chrome pushing VR and Oculus and HTC (Vive) improving their offerings.  Native games are getting better but, more importantly, browsers are getting faster and three.js and aframe are empowering incredible VR experiences with JavaScript. Before you can serve up VR experiences, however, you need to ensure the browser supports VR experiences.  To do so, you need to ensure navigator.getVRDisplays is available: 
const supportsVR = 'getVRDisplays' in navigator;

if (supportsVR) {
    navigator.getVRDisplays().then(function(displays) {
      // ... Load VR experience
    });
}
else {
    // ... Show "you need {x} browser" message
}
If navigator.getVRDisplays is present, it's likely that the browser supports VR and AR experiences. Virtual reality and augmented reality have the potential to change the world and enrich lives.  Learning how to code VR experiences will get you ahead of the curve, and as always, coding those experiences for the browser will break down the barrier of entry!
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Elegant Overflow with CSS Ellipsis

    Overflow with text is always a big issue, especially in a programmatic environment. There's always only so much space but variable content to add into that space. I was recently working on a table for displaying user information and noticed that longer strings were...

  • By
    Add Controls to the PHP Calendar

    I showed you how to create a PHP calendar last week. The post was very popular so I wanted to follow it up with another post about how you can add controls to the calendar. After all, you don't want your...

Discussion

  1. Cam

    Looks like 

    navigator.getVRDisplays

    is deprecated and should not be used any more. Oculus Quest 2 does not implement it, so it can’t really be relied on: https://discourse.threejs.org/t/navigator-getvrdisplays-not-working-on-oculus-quest-browser/23273

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!