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WebXR DOM Overlay

Category
Device
Type
New or changed feature
Status
Enabled by default (Chrome 83)
Intent stage
Prepare to ship

Summary

Allows WebXR applications using immersive-ar on handheld devices to optionally activate a DOM overlay mode where the 2D page content is shown as an interactive transparent layer on top of the application-drawn WebGL content and camera image. While the current implementation is limited to ARCore-based handheld devices, the specification is intended to also support implementation on AR headsets.

Motivation

Developers want to use DOM to create UI for their XR experiences. For VR, inline sessions are by definition within the DOM, but we have deferred this capability for immersive VR sessions. For AR, though, there is no inline mode, and 2D UI is especially important for popular use cases. We believe that supporting such UI is part of the minimum viable product for AR.

Standards & signals

Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRpXB5wX1R1QRzniysT5J1LhLQXAE5OMPX0kQiY-ozv8LsdsP22nf3mDyV6F8G92O_m0qAWMswLqOHT/pub

Samples: https://klausw.github.io/three.js/examples/webvr_lorenzattractor.html https://klausw.github.io/a-frame-car-sample/index.html https://storage.googleapis.com/chromium-webxr-test/latest.html?target=proposals/index.html

Explainers: https://github.com/immersive-web/dom-overlays

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