It's poetic how a company named after the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings closes at the end of a decade. Sad news, but as one door closes another one opens, and the dream of an open Metaverse will live on. #VR
While...
@babylonjs has Microsoft
@aframevr has Mozilla
@playcanvas has Snap
@threejs_org has Google
#AmazonSumerian has Amazon
@officialjanusvr had no large company behind it, yet what they've accomplished is astounding by any measure /2
@babylonjs has Microsoft
@aframevr has Mozilla
@playcanvas has Snap
@threejs_org has Google
#AmazonSumerian has Amazon
@officialjanusvr had no large company behind it, yet what they've accomplished is astounding by any measure /2
The fundamentals are webpages as rooms, and hyperlinks as portals. It's inspired by Snow Crash since the beginning, next gen 3D internet. There is view-source to edit the rooms in real-time with the built-in code editor, or no-code via drag n' drop.
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"My vision is of a huge inter-connected virtual world, weaved together by the users themselves, who can collaboratively browse and navigate this world, meeting contextually in places, and all served up using the existing network of HTTP servers." prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/798388653… /4
They made tools for import / export of scenes between development environments. It's useful if you want to build maps with your friends online versus doing it alone in Unity or Blender - collaborative world building is more fun and productive. /5 
Projects can import and export with an HTML file that you host and view with other people through the native or the browser based JanusWeb client - both play well with each other.
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These are companies building social VR platforms with data from Crunchbase based on capital raised. Of the few open source projects in this space, only JanusVR kept a strong WebXR focus, even going as far as making web clients for the other two. Source: hackmd.io/@XR/motivation… /7
For example: Here's a screenshot of the web client developed by the JanusVR team side by side native @HighFidelityVR, both could talk to each other and see avatar positions in the space. Code: github.com/janusvr/hifi_w… /8
They also made a WebVR client for @decentraland, hoping that some sort of collaboration can be achieved towards building a decentralized Metaverse. Code: github.com/jbaicoianu/dcl… /9
Good news: The team is making sure that Janus will live on as an open source project. The documentation and links for that are here: janusvr.github.io/guide/#/
Much work has yet to be done for building a cyberspace that respects our freedom, looking forward to whats next. /end
Much work has yet to be done for building a cyberspace that respects our freedom, looking forward to whats next. /end
