While you can access Matterport Spaces through a web browser on desktop or mobile, exploring them in virtual reality takes an additional step. Previously, you had to download the Matterport VR app from the App Store, Oculus Store, or Google Play and switch to the app whenever you wanted to go into VR. Now with Matterport’s implementation of WebVR, no external app download is required—everything you need is right in the Chrome web browser. You can go to a mobile website that has a Matterport Space embedded on it, tap the VR button, put the phone into your Daydream View headset, and you’re ready to explore.

Matterport was one of the first companies to partner with Google to bring VR to Chrome. We started integrating our product with the WebVR API while it was still in beta. We took this early step because we really believe in WebVR as a future platform, and we wanted to be there right when it launched.

Let’s dig a little deeper on how we implemented it. Because our WebGL-based player works on desktop and mobile platforms, you could already explore Matterport Spaces through a browser. We wanted to ensure that we retained this optimal performance with added WebVR support. However, a full optimization, including all the features we’ve added to our WebGL-based player in the last few years, would have taken time. So in the true spirit of keeping it simple, we made a version of the player with the WebVR Boilerplate and a stripped down version of our loading and rendering code, and we optimized everything for performance.

Here are a few of the things we did to optimize performance in VR: