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# JanusXR the past and future of the immersive web

Below is story of confusion, disbelief, and relief after deeply studying 
[JanusVR](https://janusxr.org) and the immersive web.

It is a story of noise-vs-signal regarding WebXR and the media.
The Oculus quest 2 convinced me that VR was 'good enough' to stay.
I started to dream of an user-operated programmable immersive web.

My timing, naturally, was terrible.

> Pioneers had already built it: JanusVR. But before I could discover their open, 
> hyperlink-driven spatial vision, they were closing down, Naturally, there were 
> not plenty of resources to market the opensource 
> [janusweb](https://github.com/jbaicoianu/janusweb) further.

Now, I'm stuck between realizing what was already achieved and the endless future 
promises from the commercial spatial web browser innovators. 
More hype, less history.

Here a (probably incomplete) comparison of 2 javascript XR viewers:


> * = cross-origin prohibited by [safety] webstandards

| aspect                   | JanusWeb          | AFRAME                    | 
|--------------------------|-------------------|---------------------------|
| Archive.org compatibility| high              | low (document=viewer)     |
| Content durability       | great             | highrisk (document=viewer)|
| Viewer upgrade path      | great (once)      | highrisk (document=viewer)|
| XR linking               | deep              | shallow                   |
| Blockchain-dependency    | no                | no                        |
| 3D deeplink spawnpoint   | XR Fragments URI  | no                        |
| immersive browsing       | seamless XR       | no (*)                    |
| immersive webring        | seamless XR       | no (*)                    |
| vision                   | 2D in 3D web      | 3D in 2D web              |
| network philosophy       | p2p               | client-server             |
| community size           | small             | small                     |
| community type           | dev,modding,design| webdevs                   |
| security-model           | user-consent      | webstandard defaults      |
| features                 | goal-driven       | limited by webstandards   |
| markup language          | JML               | aframe markup             |
| embeddable markup        | yes               | no                        |
| fileformat               | any               | bound to html             |
| WebXR session            | seamless,web-wide | abrupt,per-html document  |
| UI widgets               | many              | vr/ar-button              |    
| custom components        | web-wide          | per-html document         |
| custom UI widgets        | web-wide          | per-html document         |
| immersive UI elements    | yes               | no                        |
| immersive entrypoint     | once, seamless XR | XR-button in 2D webpages  |
| separate viewer-layer    | yes               | no (AFRAME=viewer+markup) |
| separate document-layer  | yes (JML)         | no (AFRAME=viewer+markup) |
| separate ui-layer        | yes incl. widgets | no                        |
| separate voip-layer      | yes (janus-webrtc)| networked-aframe          |
| separate presence-layer  | yes (janus-server)| networked-aframe          |
| secure XR space          | http basic auth   | http basic auth           |
| multiprotocol            | http,ipfs,dat,... | not included              |
| load adhoc features      | via URL-sharing   | no                        |
| lightweight library      | yes               | yes                       |
| 3D engine                | THREE             | THREE                     |
| WebXR                    | yes               | yes                       |
| Handtracking             | yes               | yes                       |
| 3D file support          | gltf,obj,dae      | gltf                      |

> Closing thought: those begging for more WebXR/metaverse interoperability 
> should checkout [janusweb](https://github.com/jbaicoianu/janusweb). 
> The JanusXR paradigm has achieved the immersive web 12 years ago, and 
> most rooms still work, since the content can be hosted anywhere.

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