v1.0 Chromium

We are thrilled to announce the release of Wolvic v1.0, marking a major milestone in the evolution of our browser, in this case, based on Chromium. This release represents a significant achievement, bringing us closer to the level of feature-completeness and stability seen in our earlier Gecko-based version. After extensive testing and optimization we consider this version production-ready, providing robust performance and a seamless experience for immersive browsing.

Highlights

• Eye tracking for navigation
• Fullscreen windows enhancements
• Title bar widget
• Stability fixes
• Support for newest Meta and Pico OS
• Added 18 new environments

What's Changed

UI

• Eye tracking support for navigation
• Improve fullscreen windows resizing
• Enhanced calculation of fullscreen initial size
• Bring back the title bar widget
• Enable password autocomplete in private browsing sessions
• Forward haptic feedback to the correct controller
• Fix crashes when voice recognizer could not be properly initialized
• Added 18 new environments

Chromium

• Fix text input fields not getting keyboard focus
• Prevent a crash when downloading files
• Disable Gecko-only features in the UI
• Added support for matterport.com

OpenXR

• Always use hand interaction profile if available
• Fix a regression when emulating a controller in WebXR
• Do not process button states when not ready
• Enable XR_EXT_view_configuration_depth_range to improve near/far clipping

Library/Infra upgrades

• Bump com.android.tools:r8 from 8.3.37 to 8.5.35
• Bump androidx.fragment:fragment from 1.7.1 to 1.8.2
• Bump gradle/actions from 3 to 4

Magic Leap 2

• Added a workaround for a hand interaction bug in OpenXR runtime

Vision Glass

• Drastically improve phone controller accuracy and precision
• Show legal terms in phone UI
• Voice button can now be used for search and text input

Meta Quest 2/3/Pro

• Support for the upcoming v69 OS version

Pico 4/4E

• Added support for PicoOS 5.11.1
• Use XR_BD_controller_interaction if available
• Use a different Android property to get the OS version
• Disable XR_EXT_hand_interaction extension as it’s buggy

New Contributors

• @abhijeetk made their first contribution in #1513

1.7.0

Highlights

• Bring back the title bar widget.
• Add the hand interaction input profile.
• Support eye-tracking navigation.
• Update the Gecko version to v128.
• Many bugfixes and stability improvements.

Notes

UI

• Bring back the title bar widget, a small element that provides information and quick media actions for windows that don't have the focus.
• Don't reduce the size of the window when we go to fullscreen, which used to happen in some cases.

Input

• Add the hand interaction input profile, via OpenXR's XR_EXT_hand_interaction extension. This allows us to use the OpenXR input model for hand tracking and gestures, instead of relying on vendor-specific extensions.
• Support eye-tracking navigation via OpenXR's XR_EXT_eye_gaze_interaction extension. Users are able to navigate with their gaze while using their hands or controllers for other input actions. Wolvic will ask for permission before enabling this feature.
• Clean up and polish a lot of our input-related code.

Content

• Update the Gecko version to v128. This required updating some GeckoView APIs, as well as Mozilla's Android Components to the new version.
• Support OpenXR's XR_EXT_view_configuration_depth_range extension, which provides additional graphical information which will help us improve Wolvic's performance.
• Fix layout errors when YouTube and other pages are displayed on a very large screen.

Huawei Vision Glass

• Voice input can be triggered from the phone UI. If the user is editing a text field, the spoken words will be added to it. Otherwise, the words will be used to launch a search.
• The phone UI can be used for seeking backward and forward in the currently playing media, even if it is not in fullscreen.
• Back button works as expected if used before we have entered immersive mode.
• Multiple improvements in stability and functionality.

Others

• Many bugfixes and stability improvements.

v0.9.1 Chromium beta

This is the second and last release of 0.9.x series of Wolvic with the Chromium backend. The next one, v1.0, will be released in some stores so you wouldn't have to sideload it.

This v0.9.1 brings all the latest bug fixes and enhancements from the latest Gecko-based v1.6.1 plus some specifics related to the use of Chromium as the Web Engine. The main highlights are the upgrade from Chromium M121 to M124 and also the support for the OpenXR hand interaction profile for much better hand tracking in selected supported devices

Chromium improvements

• Upgraded Chromium version from M121 to M124
• Fixed a crash in media permissions
• Fixed an orientation issue when entering WebXR experiences
• Fixed a reference space reset happening on every frame

Wolvic improvements

• Everything mentioned in the v1.6.1 release notes
• Added support for OpenXR hand interaction profile for devices supporting the XR_EXT_hand_interaction extension

1.6.1

Highlights

• Immersive videos can be reoriented along the vertical axis.
• Clearer logic for resizing.
• The buttons B/Y can be used to go back to the previous page
• This version introduces support for the Huawei Vision Glass.
• Many, many bugfixes and stability improvements.

Notes

UI

• Immersive videos can be reoriented along the vertical axis. A long press on the controller's Home button will reorient the video in the direction of your gaze. Note that this works on pages that serve video content directly (e.g. YouTube) but not on those that use their own WebXr player.
• Clearer logic for resizing: we set a maximum and minimum size and allow for consistent size changes between those boundaries, preserving the current aspect ratio as much as possible.
• Preserve the suggested URL when you click the "go" button in the keyboard.
• Widgets like dialogs and the keyboard will be displayed on a flat surface and oriented towards the user, which makes them more visible in all cases.
• Fix some issues related to recentering and headlock.
• Display an explanation before requesting a permission (HVR in China)

Input

• The buttons B/Y can be used to go back to the previous page, when you are not inside an immersive WebXR application.
• Enable the full range of hand motion, which improves the accuracy of hand tracking.

Content

• Ensure that several websites work properly: Google Meet, Soundcloud, museodelprado.es, zingmp3.vn, nhaccuatui.com
• Restart Wolvic after the user signs out from their Mozilla account and clears the contents of the Library.

Huawei Vision Glass

• This version introduces support for the Huawei Vision Glass, a set of AR glasses which are tethered to the smartphone and can display immersive content. The phone itself can be used as a controller, with a new secondary UI that includes a touchpad and media controls.

Others

• The app version code will be autogenerated from now on, based on the date when a package was created.
• Refresh battery levels less frequently, which helps preserve battery, and improve how the current battery level is displayed.
• Remove the passthrough layer when entering immersive mode on Meta and other platforms, which improves performance and avoids glitches.
• Many, many bugfixes and stability improvements.

v0.9 Chromium beta

This is the first (beta) release of Wolvic using the Chromium backend. We have generalized the code so that it can be used with different web engines. This is a beta release so it isn't production ready yet. It should be mostly on par with the Gecko v1.6 release in terms of features with a few exceptions:

• Extensions: pending to be implemented
• Mozilla Accounts (former FirefoxSync) is not working yet due to the lack of extension support
• Auto detection of immersive video format: this is done in gecko with a built-in extension, as there is no support for extensions this cannot be done

We're initially publishing this for 4 major platforms (more to come in the future depending on funding):

• Meta : supporting Quest 2, Quest 3 and Quest Pro (although there is a codec issue in the Quest 3 causing a lot of flickering when playing videos)
• Pico: supporting Neo 3, Pico 4 and Pico 4E
• HVR: for Huawei VR Glasses
• AOSP(x64): this is a generic build for AOSP x64 devices mainly designed for the Magic Leap 2

1.6.0

Release Notes for Wolvic 1.6.0

Highlights

• Support fullscreen vertical videos.
• Auto-completion support for Latin keyboards.
• Better responsiveness and stability of keyboard input.
• Support for the Pico Neo3.
• Upgraded the Web engine to Gecko 121
• Add new environments.

Notes

UI

• Support fullscreen vertical videos.
• Improved support for fullscreen content in general.
• Don't use a fixed-width viewport for desktop mode. Note that desktop mode will still affect the browser's User-Agent.
• The preset buttons (1x, 2x, etc.) will resize a window according to its current aspect ratio.
• Lower the maximum display DPI to 300, since larger values don't work on most devices.
• Curved display does not affect VR video.
• Fix small issues when experimental UI settings are applied.
• Fix and issue with display density when exiting VR video mode.
• Fix a bug where the browser window may be transparent at startup.
• Remove the telemetry privacy option, as the Mozilla telemetry service is currently disabled in Wolvic. This option remains on Huawei platforms, which use their own telemetry system.
• Remove the unused crash-report setting.
• Support courses.certify-ed.com
• Add new environments: Meadow, Milky Way, and Above the Clouds.
• Expanded translations. Currently Wolvic is fully translated to English, Spanish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, Korean, French, Danish, Swedish, and Galician.

Input

• Auto-completion support for Latin keyboards. This feature is currently disabled by default as we continue testing and polishing it. You can enable it in Settings, Display, Latin Keyboard Input Auto-complete. The dictionaries for each language will be downloaded on demand.
• Better responsiveness and stability of keyboard input.
• Don't go back with the B and Y buttons in the controllers. This was rarely used and prevented WebXR apps from using those buttons.

Pico

• Support for the Pico Neo3.

Others

• Improved stability at application launch, including error handling for voice recognition, session initialization, and VR infrastructure.
• Upgrade our version of the Gecko Web engine to 121.0.1. Upgrade the Mozilla Android Components to 121.1.0.
• Shrink the size of resources in release builds.

1.5.2

Release Notes for Wolvic 1.5.2

Highlights

• Increase the logical size and resolution of Web pages. The default window has a logical size of 1024x576 CSS pixels. We also use a higher resolution to render the Web page (the exact value depends on the device).
• Add four new experimental features to provide more detailed control of the window environment:
  • Adjust the distance of browser windows, moving them closer or farther away.
  • Align vertically windows of different heights.
  • Move windows horizontally around the user.
  • Head lock: the browser window remains centered in the user's view, which is useful for watching videos and also in the case of devices with a narrow field of view.
• Add six new environments.

Notes

UI

• Increase the logical size and resolution of Web pages. The default window has a logical size of 1024x576 CSS pixels. We also use a higher resolution to render the Web page (the exact value depends on the device)
• Add four new experimental features to provide more detailed control of the window environment:
  • Adjust the distance of browser windows, moving them closer or farther away.
  • Align vertically windows of different heights.
  • Move windows horizontally around the user.
  • Head lock: the browser window remains centered in the user's view, which is useful for watching videos and also in the case of devices with a narrow field of view.
• Add six new environments:
  • Autumn Forest
  • Basic Sky
  • Barcelona Rooftops
  • Night Forest With Aurora Sky
  • Pretville Cinema
  • Winter Night
• Hide brightness button when playing video in Passthrough.
• Remove duplicated suggestions in the URL bar.

Meta

• Adjust device detection in the case of the Meta Quest 3.
• Select 90Hz refresh rate for Meta Quest 3.

Others

• Add desktop-mode overrides for popular Chinese websites.
• Enable setting the device name in Mozilla account and present it correctly to the user.

1.5.1

Highlights

• Wolvic now supports downloading new 3D environments online. Access this feature through the "Environment" section in the Settings.
• A new "Spring" environment is ready for download. Visit our repository at Wolvic 3D Environments on GitHub for updates and suggestions.
• Added compatibility with the Meta Quest 3.
• Added passthrough support for Pico devices.
• Wolvic is now also compatible with different phones when using Huawei Glasses.
• The keyboard now includes voice input, allowing you to dictate text directly into website fields
• Multiple enhancements and fixes for Chinese and Japanese keyboards.
• Enabled the use of your system's trusted root certificates (fixes issue #489).
• Added option to clear all user data.

Notes

Meta

• Added compatibility with the Meta Quest 3.

Pico

• Added passthrough support for Pico devices.

Huawei

• Wolvic is now also compatible with different phones when using Huawei Glasses.

Media

• Multiple fixes in video playback including curved fullscreen display, pause behavior and seeking bar time.
• Added top-bottom format support for VR video playback.
• Allow users to jump to the start/end of a video by clicking on time labels.
• Added capability to play different projection types of VR videos continuously.
• Support playing fullscreen video on a curved screen (fixes issue #1055).

Input

• The keyboard now includes voice input, allowing you to dictate text directly into website fields
• Multiple enhancements and fixes for Chinese and Japanese keyboards.
• Resolved issues with voice input when the keyboard uses composing text.
• Various other fixes and improvements in voice input, including default language selection.

UI

• Wolvic now supports downloading new 3D environments online. Access this feature through the "Environment" section in the Settings.
• A new "Spring" environment is ready for download. Visit our repository at Wolvic 3D Environments on GitHub for updates and suggestions.
• Enabled starting the app on passthrough mode.
• Tray date now uses a dynamic format instead of hardcoded values.
• Small UI improvements to the date/time picker.
• Pointer's appearance remains consistent when using hands or controllers
• Unify tooltip sizes across devices

Security

• Enabled the use of your system's trusted root certificates (fixes issue #489).
• Added option to clear all user data.

Others

• Build variants can now use different default homepages.

1.5

First big update since the 1.4.x series. This new release include new cool features, tons of bug fixes and several UI improvements. Up front we have new hand models for devices supporting XR_MSFT_hand_tracking_mesh extension, new Find in Page feature or the support for YouTube captions. Among other fixes, we've finally tackled the issue of white flashes on some WebXR experiences and we've brought back AppleTV playback.

The biggest changes are really behind the scenes, though. We upgraded both the Gecko and Android Components versions to 116, much more recent (and thus feature-rich) than previous versions. Along with that, a great deal of work went into upgrading or removing deprecated API calls in favor of more modern APIs. This has greatly increased the health of our codebase, and keeps users as up to date as possible with new web capabilities.

Highlights

• Upgraded Gecko to v116
• Upgraded Android Components to v116
• Removed white flashes appearing with low FPS
• Massive modernization of codebase including a large upgrade of deprecated APIs
• New DateTime picker dialog
• Find in page
• Hands rendering with XR_MSFT_hand_tracking_mesh where available
• New flavour for generic AOSP devices

Notes

Gecko

• Upgraded to Gecko 116.0.3 (from 103)

Web Browsing

• Removed white flashes with discarded frames
• Implemented DateTime picker dialog
• Pass only valid URIs to loadURI
• Enable blob:// downloads
• Enable local file navigation (file://)

UI

• Reenabled automatic projection selection for YouTube VR videos
• Properly update the WiFi icon after connectivity changes
• Open feedback form in a new tab/window
• Open URLs from Intents in another tab/window
• Added support to Find in Page
• Fixed 3D side by side video playback on curved mode
• Updated translations: Chinese, Korean
• Fixed disable auto-complete setting
• Automatically select search engine based on region if not set

OpenXR

• Added support for XR_EXTX_overlay allowing Wolvic to be composited with other OpenXR apps
• Properly map controller primary action with hand tracking
• Added support to render the hand mesh using XR_MSFT_hand_tracking_mesh extension
• Refactored OpenXR hand mesh rendering with a strategy pattern

Media

• Added support for YouTube captions
• Fixed AppleTV playback

Stability

• Fixed a crash in HTML select element
• Fixed restart of Wolvic after changes in settings
• Fixed a crash when WiFi signal strength cannot be retrieved

Code health

• Upgraded Mozilla Android Components from v75 to v116
• Migrated from browser-search component to feature-search
• Modernized code to detect WiFi status changes
• Migrated SearchEngineWrapper to Kotlin
• Modernize deprecated AsyncTask
• Modernize deprecated dispatchConfigurationChanged()
• Modernize deprecated OnSystemUiVisibilityChangeListener
• Removed API<24 codepaths
• Migrate code to the new zip4j version
• Modernize deprecated setSystemUiVisibility() and related flags
• Fix deprecated methods in API 33
• Fix deprecated Fragment and FragmentTransaction
• Use androidx's PreferenceManager
• Remove deprecated cookieLifetime
• Fixed several deprecations and add comments for deprecation
• Fixed deprecated android.preference.PreferenceManager
• Fixed Kotlin build warnings
• Set PackagingOptions.jniLibs.useLegacyPackaging = true

Infra

• Added OpenCollective funding link to github
• Removed WaveVR build dependency for non-WaveVR flavours
• Added support for CMake >=3.10.2+
• Disable fail-fast in CI
• Setup github's dependabot
• Added machinery to create Huawei and Pico packages for mainland China

Chromium backend

• Implemented incognito mode
• Set WebGL MSAA level on startup
• Added Downloads support via DownloadManagerDelegate
• Mute tabs when inactive
• Fix aim pose on WebXR
• Use Wolvic's User Agent

Pico

• Allow Wolvic to read from Downloads folder
• Fixed hand tracking support for PicoOS >= 5.7.1
• Do not go back when clicking on "take screenshot" button

MagicLeap2

• Added controller support

AOSP

• New flavour for generic AOSP devices (supporting both arm64 and x64)

SnapdragonSpaces

• Do not enable passthrough by default on the VRX (only in the Lenovo A3)

New Contributors

• @HollowMan6 made their first contribution in #773
• @MikeRatcliffe made their first contribution in #749

1.4.2

Second minor release of the 1.4.x series. This release includes bug fixes, UI improvements, and enhanced stability.

Downloads

Downloaded files will be stored in the device's public Downloads folder so they are available outside of Wolvic. This change makes Wolvic more useful and convenient, as it now follows the expected behaviour of a Web browser.

Hand tracking

Hand tracking detection is more reliable. Furthermore, the code that tracks gestures has been refactored to greatly reduce the unintended triggering of gestures and to give us a more flexible foundation going forward.

We have also fixed a bug in the Lynx R1 where the controllers were not visible while visiting an immersive WebXR experience, and another where the left hand gesture was not triggering the Menu button.

Text input

The keyboard's layout will follow the system's language by default, unless the user changes their preferred language and/or layout within Wolvic.

Search suggestions in the URL bar will no longer omit some characters

Web dialogs

We will display a confirmation dialog before re-submitting a POST form.

Download dialogs have a nicer appearance.

<select> Web prompts will remember the selected option after they are closed and open again.