Why we’re making the web the home of AR, VR and WebXR content (2024)

At Zappar, we believe that the web browser should be the home of immersive 3D content, including augmented, virtual and mixed reality experiences. That's why today we're excited to announce end-to-end support for WebXR across our creative tooling, making it easier for designers and developers from all backgrounds to create the next generation of AR, VR and Web3D content.

In our era of 24-7 social media, content has to go above and beyond to leave a lasting impression on consumers. That’s the opportunity of immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality – to deliver an experience that’s more impactful and memorable than a 10-second video that’s swiped away with the flick of a finger on autopilot. Those who have walked a wooden plank from the heights of a virtual skyscraper, or fought the zombie hordes from inside a VR headset, can attest to the level of realism and emotion that immersive experiences can deliver. The effects that immersive technologies like AR/VR have on the brain are something that’s been well documented by others and indeed our research with NeuroInsight and Mindshare back in 2018.

That may be an acceptable journey for high-budget ‘AAA’ games, but for shorter-form experiences, where users are expected to spend anywhere up to 30 minutes engaging, it can be an unbalanced value exchange, both for the developer and the consumer. In addition, there are specific use cases where app store distribution just isn’t possible or appropriate, such as learning and development, where an organisation may only want to distribute content internally.

And that’s where Zappar comes in 🙂.

Today we can announce that two of our most powerful tools now support WebXR, enabling the creation of experiences targeting a wide range of devices and form factors, including headsets, smartphones and desktops.

Designer is our no-code tool for building immersive experiences, including augmented reality, and now also, WebXR. Designer simplifies 3D content creation, providing a drag-and-drop interface, with lightweight yet powerful animation and particle systems.

From today, we are delighted to announce that Designer now supports building content for Headsets, starting with the Meta Quest (with more to come!) as well as having a significant upgrade to its animation potential with the addition of new presets and trigger types.Read more about the updates to Designer here.

Mattercraft is our complete 3D development environment for the web. It lets developers super-power their existing expertise with rich and intuitive 3D tooling including real-time physics, a powerful animation system including timelines and states, and full integration with the NPM repository of JavaScript libraries. Mattercraft’s WebXR implementation includes full support for controllers and hand tracking, enabling fully interactive experiences.

Both tools are web-based and collaborative, so they’re easy to integrate within existing teams and workflows. With either Designer or Mattercraft you can create, deploy, and distribute immersive content within minutes, on a large range of supported devices.

Read more about Mattercraft's WebXR support here.

We’ve already discussed some of the incumbent headsets on the market, including Quest and Apple Vision Pro. But, here at Zappar, we’re also aware that these devices can be expensive.

That’s why we’ve built a headset of our own, called Zapbox. It provides a comparable virtual and mixed reality experience to users but at a fraction of the cost. For just $89, Zapbox provides a headset (that you pop your smartphone into) plus two fully-tracked handheld controllers.