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WebXR AR Lighting Estimation

Category

Device

Type

New or changed feature

Status

Enabled by default (Chrome 90)

Intent stage

Shipped

Summary

Allows sites to query for estimates of the environmental lighting conditions within WebXr sessions. This exposes both spherical harmonics representing the ambient lighting, as well as a cubemap texture representing "reflections".

Motivation

Adding Lighting Estimation can help to make your models feel more natural and like they "fit" better with the user's environment. This can make them feel more "real" or "natural".

Standards & signals

• Specification: https://immersive-web.github.io/lighting-estimation/
• Firefox: Positive
• Safari: No signal
• Web developers: Positive — Interest is primarily from libraries (e.g. Three.js, ModelViewer)

Docs: https://github.com/immersive-web/lighting-estimation/blob/master/lighting-estimation-explainer.md

Samples: https://storage.googleapis.com/chromium-webxr-test/latest.html?target=proposals/lighting-estimation.html

Explainers: https://github.com/immersive-web/lighting-estimation/blob/master/lighting-estimation-explainer.md

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