May 20, 2024 • 16 mins
Christine Perey chats with Jonathan Hale, CEO & CTO of Wonderland Engine. They look at the emerging market for standards-based performance software, the implementation of WebGPU, WebGL, OpenXR, and related standards, and the challenges of delivering WebXR. Read Christine's Top 12 blog: "Top 2024 Enterprise AR Trends to Watch" https://thearea.org/top-2024-enterprise-ar-trends-to-watch/ #11 is Standards!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello, I'm Karen Quatromoni,
the director of Public Relationsfor Object Management Group, OMG.
Welcome to our OMG Podcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focusing on theaugmented reality for Enterprise
(00:26):
Alliance area, which is an OMG program.
The area accelerates AR adoptionby creating a comprehensive
ecosystem for enterprises,providers, and research institutions.
This q and a session will be led byChristine Perey from Perey Research and
Consulting.
(00:48):
I'm happy to host this firesidechat with Jonathan Hale of
Wonderland Engine.
We're going to be talking aboutWebEx AR and the standards that are
part of an ecosystem, aconstellation of standards.
We've heard them called Jonathan.
Please introduce yourselfand tell me why you're here.
(01:10):
Yeah, thanks. Sine I'm thefounder of Wonderland Engine.
We built a developmentplatform for XR on the web,
that's AR and VR on the webobviously. And hopefully today,
I'll tell you a bit why youshouldn't sleep on the web,
just like the internet was a largething and yeah, let's see what happens.
Okay.
Good. Yeah, so why
(01:33):
is it relevant now?
There's been a lot of people whoare pessimistic about web-based ar,
they say it's not readyfor primetime things.
Why is it relevant to younow and to our audience?
So I think WebEx R as a standardis relevant more than ever
for web AR because itreally allows browsers to
(01:56):
produce the best implementationfor AR tracking on the web,
literally an implementation that isindistinguishable from native ar.
And that can only happen if we find acommon standard that all browsers kind of
agree on implementing. And then ofcourse browsers need to implement that.
But I believe that is the way toget high quality AR on the web.
(02:18):
And easy distribution. I thinkthat's another component is
how to get people who don'thave to download an app.
They don't have to go toan app store. There's many,
many web-based principles and concepts,
but people have been pessimisticbecause they say it's not
(02:40):
fast enough. The performancehas been an issue.
Can you talk a little bit about whythat's not an issue for you now?
Yeah, unfortunately the web hadindeed quite a bad reputation around
3D rendering on the web can'tbe as fast and these things,
that's because the browser adds alot of overhead on basically all the
(03:01):
API that you use to communicatewith the GPU. At Wonderland,
we actually designed the engine aroundall of these overheads and all of these
restrictions that you have on the weband we were able to show that for even VR
headsets,
we can achieve the native performanceof the device through the browser.
Because if you think about it, theGPU underneath is the same, right?
(03:25):
So if you send the GPUAcertain program to execute it,
then it's just going toexecute it as fast as possible.
The only thing that is slow isreally sending it to the GPU.
And if you do this in times whereyou have the time during loading and
these kinds of things, then youmight circumvent a lot of that.
It's like a rough oversimplificationof what needs to happen,
(03:45):
but that's kind of howyou can think about it.
The device underneath is really notrestricted by the browser in any way.
So is web GPUA standard?Is it a technology?
Explain to us more what web GPU is.
Okay, so Web GPU is the, theycall it the next Gen graphics,
API for the browser.
(04:06):
It allows websites toaccess functionality of the
GPU of hardware for the graphicsprocessing, drawing pixels,
but also maybe executing AImodels and these kinds of things.
So really using the GPU asa general processing unit.
Is there another standard?
Is there a Kronos Group standardthat's similar to web GPU and who
(04:29):
standardized web GPU is that aW three C standard like Web xr?
So WebGL is the current standardand the one that is most
commonly available on all devicesand therefore the current target for
basically any graphicsapplication on the web right now.
And web GPU is tryingto align more to modern
(04:51):
graphics features and how moderngraphics APIs like Vulcan,
that is also a chron standard works.
But WebGL basically has been doinga great job as the first wave
of graphics APIs to givewebsites access to the GPU
such that they can havehigh performance rendering.
(05:11):
Well, is it a standard,is web GPUA standard?
Is it from the W three C or is it,
we know Jet WebGL is a KNO standard.Vulcan is for native applications,
I believe. So tell me about wherewill I go to find the web GPU
specification?
Yes.
So the web GPU is by the W three C working
(05:35):
group and they are workingon standardizing it.
I dunno if it's fully standardized as in,
cannot be changed anymorebecause obviously it is very new and they're trying to
get it right.
So I don't actually knowif it's officially a full
standard already, but it is definitelygoing to be in the next couple of.
Yeah, and I think this is an importantpoint that you're making, which is,
(06:00):
it's a progression, right?
We don't just one day wake up and huh,
there's the standard and it's implementedin all the devices and all the,
it's not how it works, is it? There'sa unfortunately no. Yeah, beginning.
There's a beginning and then more adoptersand more implementations and there's
some improvements. And so I think
(06:24):
we're not quite at thebeginning of a new trend.
This is a trend that has been here,
it's been in place and nowwe're picking up momentum.
Now do you also do anythingwith Web XR that's a
Kronos standard? I'm sorry,
OpenXR that exposes the capabilities of a
(06:48):
device?
Yeah, so we don'tdirectly work with OpenXR,
but OpenXR is really important to usbecause browsers use it to implement
the WebEx XR standard.
So WebEx XR again is a W three C standardthat is for browsers to implement
like Safari Chrome, Firefox,
and they will usually useOpenXR to kind of make their
(07:11):
browser as compatible as possiblewith all kind of VR devices and AR
devices out there.
Perfect. Excellent. Well,
we've spoken about our enthusiasm and how
standards are a component towardsthat goal of having an easy
(07:31):
access,
skipping all of the app stores andgiving people the ability to click on a
link even within an experience to launch
another experience.
So a person might use theWonderland engine to create
experiences that are just a click away.
(07:52):
Is that right?
Absolutely.
I think the frictionless accessto web applications is extremely
important and one of the hugekind of benefits of the web here.
Yes. So we've talked aboutbenefits and why the time is right,
but what are the challenges that stillface those who want to use WebEx R
(08:12):
to deliver web-based experiences?What are the challenges?
And we can talk about the challengesfor people who are in the hardware camp.
I mean, are there glasses manufacturerswho just say, we're going with web,
we're going to put a really goodbrowser that supports everything.
Are there such headset or wearable device
(08:36):
manufacturers that arevery aligned with web-based
principles?
Yeah, I believe that most smaller original
equipment manufacturers are actually superinterested in the web because unlocks
an entire existing ecosystem of content.So by just providing the browser,
they all of a sudden have access to allof these web games out there already.
(09:00):
And for example, there'sa company called Alia,
which are building the open source browserwhich emerged from Firefox to reality
I remember and exactly.
And they are doing a great jobonboarding as many original equipment
manufacturers as possible. Soif you are representing one,
you can reach out and get your devicesupported there fairly easily as well
(09:23):
because they do implement the WebExR standard and it allows Wonderland
Engine to run on anyof these kind of sorry
devices and all the apps builtwith it automatically as well.
So.
Absolutely. So one ofthe challenges is to have
(09:44):
devices that are compatible and that
have pre-installed the necessary
components and probably
no challenge for a device manufacturer
install that. I believe it's opensource. So there's not a license.
(10:06):
Is there to the device manufacturers,
do they have to pay a license for?
No.
So they can actually adopt and customizethe open source code for their device
as well.
The great benefit here is becausethey're usually working with an OpenXR
standard,
a great chances that your device mightalready support and then they'll already
(10:27):
be supported by some of these browserskind of almost out of the box. So the
friction to get a browsersupported is basically super
low and super easy to do.
And from a softwaredevelopment perspective,
let's say I'm a developer andI want to make my experiences
(10:50):
available on all platformsthat have support for WebEx xr,
what are the challengesor what do I need to do?
Am I going to be going back to Unity?
Am I going to be goingto Unreal Engine there?
Many other choices aren't there?
Yeah, so I'm obviously building one,
so it's a little bit hardto not be biased here.
(11:13):
Unity does have an HML five target.
So if your project isalready based on Unity,
you can try exportingthe project through that.
Unreal Engine does not supportthe web directly, unfortunately.
So you will need to rebuild in a powerfulengine if you're starting out your
project. I recommendWonderland Engine of course,
and we can even good choice get yourproject from Unity ported over to
(11:35):
Wonderland Engine because we do care alot about performance and want to give
you the native performance in the browser.
And we believe that's one of thebiggest challenges that you might face
otherwise.
But there's a bunch of open sourceframeworks that you can use as well from
Pablo Js, a-frame through gs.
There's Play Canvas also provides avery nice workflow for building 3D
(11:56):
applications.
But so if you want a very unity likeworkflow go with Wonderland engine,
it's optimized for the web.
Really good. That's very good.
And I think now Wonderland Engine,
you're providing this developmentenvironment. If I understand correctly,
(12:18):
another thing I'm noticing,
a trend in terms of developmentenvironments is there's so
many low-code
develop solutions out there nowfor enterprise and industrial.
It's tricky because people,
they don't want to host anythingoutside of their network.
(12:42):
How does Wonderlandengine work in terms of
intranet? Or do I need toconnect to your services?
So Wonderland Engine is a applicationthat you download and install kind of like
any other software,
Photoshop or Blender or anything youmight be using for 3D development already
and s.
(13:02):
DK produces. Yeah.
Yeah, it's exactly. And software.
SK comes with a 3D editor and justpackages in less than a second and
optimizes all your assets in less thana second and produces a bunch of web
files. So that's h ml, JavaScript webassembly, and you can just host them,
whatever can host a static website. Thatmight be Amazon AWS or GitLab pages,
(13:23):
any free hosting solution or your internalintranet will be able to host that as
well. So no restrictions at all.
Right? Right. Okay, perfect.
So those are concernsthat when many people in
industrial settings here web,
they automatically think we'retalking about the public web and
(13:45):
not their own web implementations.
I think for enterprise,
the web is amazing because you alreadyhave the browser as a very secure sandbox
and usually you need IT whitelisting of various software.
And it's just a way biggerhurdle to go through all of that.
(14:06):
It really is. It's so,
so true that this questionof integration with existing
systems and if you already havea browser that supports Web XR
internally certified, it's ano-brainer, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah.
And if the performance isequal to what we would see in
(14:27):
Native. So those are really good points.
Yeah, I think what you just mentioned,if the performance is equal,
is one of the biggest unlocksbecause I believe that just by
design, the web is a better developmentplatform. You publish one application,
it runs everywhere.
You can just accessthe deployed app really
(14:49):
quickly. You're in control ofdeploying as much as you want.
You don't go through third party appstores, you don't have to pay fees there.
You don't have to wait for curation,
potentially have no control over whenis your release date, all of that.
So many advantages.
But that one thing that wasbasically unsolved was how the
performance is just notas on that same level.
(15:12):
And we believe we fixed that and kindof unlock all of these advantages of
the web four people.
So yeah, that's the breakthroughif you will. Exactly.
Is this maybe
secret sauce that you'vedeveloped to take the
most advantage of what'sout there and to unlock
(15:36):
these benefits of web-basedexperiences? Yeah. Fantastic.
Well, it was great to meet youin person at CES and likewise,
you have a very, veryexciting future ahead.
You've already been involvedin this field a very long time.
I think you are an earlyproponent of web-based
(15:57):
experiences and no, thank you for that.
I'm excited lookingforward to your future.
Likewise. Thank you forthe opportunity, Christine.
Was it? It's my pleasure. Thankyou. Bye-Bye, Jonathan. Bye.
Hello, I'm Karen Quatromoni,
the director of Public Relationsfor Object Management Group, OMG.
Welcome to our OMG Podcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focusing on theaugmented reality for Enterprise
(00:26):
Alliance area, which is an OMG program.
The area accelerates AR adoptionby creating a comprehensive
ecosystem for enterprises,providers, and research institutions.
This q and a session will be led byChristine Perey from Perey Research and
Consulting.
(00:48):
I'm happy to host this firesidechat with Jonathan Hale of
Wonderland Engine.
We're going to be talking aboutWebEx AR and the standards that are
part of an ecosystem, aconstellation of standards.
We've heard them called Jonathan.
Please introduce yourselfand tell me why you're here.
(01:10):
Yeah, thanks. Sine I'm thefounder of Wonderland Engine.
We built a developmentplatform for XR on the web,
that's AR and VR on the webobviously. And hopefully today,
I'll tell you a bit why youshouldn't sleep on the web,
just like the internet was a largething and yeah, let's see what happens.
Okay.
Good. Yeah, so why
(01:33):
is it relevant now?
There's been a lot of people whoare pessimistic about web-based ar,
they say it's not readyfor primetime things.
Why is it relevant to younow and to our audience?
So I think WebEx R as a standardis relevant more than ever
for web AR because itreally allows browsers to
(01:56):
produce the best implementationfor AR tracking on the web,
literally an implementation that isindistinguishable from native ar.
And that can only happen if we find acommon standard that all browsers kind of
agree on implementing. And then ofcourse browsers need to implement that.
But I believe that is the way toget high quality AR on the web.
(02:18):
And easy distribution. I thinkthat's another component is
how to get people who don'thave to download an app.
They don't have to go toan app store. There's many,
many web-based principles and concepts,
but people have been pessimisticbecause they say it's not
(02:40):
fast enough. The performancehas been an issue.
Can you talk a little bit about whythat's not an issue for you now?
Yeah, unfortunately the web hadindeed quite a bad reputation around
3D rendering on the web can'tbe as fast and these things,
that's because the browser adds alot of overhead on basically all the
(03:01):
API that you use to communicatewith the GPU. At Wonderland,
we actually designed the engine aroundall of these overheads and all of these
restrictions that you have on the weband we were able to show that for even VR
headsets,
we can achieve the native performanceof the device through the browser.
Because if you think about it, theGPU underneath is the same, right?
(03:25):
So if you send the GPUAcertain program to execute it,
then it's just going toexecute it as fast as possible.
The only thing that is slow isreally sending it to the GPU.
And if you do this in times whereyou have the time during loading and
these kinds of things, then youmight circumvent a lot of that.
It's like a rough oversimplificationof what needs to happen,
(03:45):
but that's kind of howyou can think about it.
The device underneath is really notrestricted by the browser in any way.
So is web GPUA standard?Is it a technology?
Explain to us more what web GPU is.
Okay, so Web GPU is the, theycall it the next Gen graphics,
API for the browser.
(04:06):
It allows websites toaccess functionality of the
GPU of hardware for the graphicsprocessing, drawing pixels,
but also maybe executing AImodels and these kinds of things.
So really using the GPU asa general processing unit.
Is there another standard?
Is there a Kronos Group standardthat's similar to web GPU and who
(04:29):
standardized web GPU is that aW three C standard like Web xr?
So WebGL is the current standardand the one that is most
commonly available on all devicesand therefore the current target for
basically any graphicsapplication on the web right now.
And web GPU is tryingto align more to modern
(04:51):
graphics features and how moderngraphics APIs like Vulcan,
that is also a chron standard works.
But WebGL basically has been doinga great job as the first wave
of graphics APIs to givewebsites access to the GPU
such that they can havehigh performance rendering.
(05:11):
Well, is it a standard,is web GPUA standard?
Is it from the W three C or is it,
we know Jet WebGL is a KNO standard.Vulcan is for native applications,
I believe. So tell me about wherewill I go to find the web GPU
specification?
Yes.
So the web GPU is by the W three C working
(05:35):
group and they are workingon standardizing it.
I dunno if it's fully standardized as in,
cannot be changed anymorebecause obviously it is very new and they're trying to
get it right.
So I don't actually knowif it's officially a full
standard already, but it is definitelygoing to be in the next couple of.
Yeah, and I think this is an importantpoint that you're making, which is,
(06:00):
it's a progression, right?
We don't just one day wake up and huh,
there's the standard and it's implementedin all the devices and all the,
it's not how it works, is it? There'sa unfortunately no. Yeah, beginning.
There's a beginning and then more adoptersand more implementations and there's
some improvements. And so I think
(06:24):
we're not quite at thebeginning of a new trend.
This is a trend that has been here,
it's been in place and nowwe're picking up momentum.
Now do you also do anythingwith Web XR that's a
Kronos standard? I'm sorry,
OpenXR that exposes the capabilities of a
(06:48):
device?
Yeah, so we don'tdirectly work with OpenXR,
but OpenXR is really important to usbecause browsers use it to implement
the WebEx XR standard.
So WebEx XR again is a W three C standardthat is for browsers to implement
like Safari Chrome, Firefox,
and they will usually useOpenXR to kind of make their
(07:11):
browser as compatible as possiblewith all kind of VR devices and AR
devices out there.
Perfect. Excellent. Well,
we've spoken about our enthusiasm and how
standards are a component towardsthat goal of having an easy
(07:31):
access,
skipping all of the app stores andgiving people the ability to click on a
link even within an experience to launch
another experience.
So a person might use theWonderland engine to create
experiences that are just a click away.
(07:52):
Is that right?
Absolutely.
I think the frictionless accessto web applications is extremely
important and one of the hugekind of benefits of the web here.
Yes. So we've talked aboutbenefits and why the time is right,
but what are the challenges that stillface those who want to use WebEx R
(08:12):
to deliver web-based experiences?What are the challenges?
And we can talk about the challengesfor people who are in the hardware camp.
I mean, are there glasses manufacturerswho just say, we're going with web,
we're going to put a really goodbrowser that supports everything.
Are there such headset or wearable device
(08:36):
manufacturers that arevery aligned with web-based
principles?
Yeah, I believe that most smaller original
equipment manufacturers are actually superinterested in the web because unlocks
an entire existing ecosystem of content.So by just providing the browser,
they all of a sudden have access to allof these web games out there already.
(09:00):
And for example, there'sa company called Alia,
which are building the open source browserwhich emerged from Firefox to reality
I remember and exactly.
And they are doing a great jobonboarding as many original equipment
manufacturers as possible. Soif you are representing one,
you can reach out and get your devicesupported there fairly easily as well
(09:23):
because they do implement the WebExR standard and it allows Wonderland
Engine to run on anyof these kind of sorry
devices and all the apps builtwith it automatically as well.
So.
Absolutely. So one ofthe challenges is to have
(09:44):
devices that are compatible and that
have pre-installed the necessary
components and probably
no challenge for a device manufacturer
install that. I believe it's opensource. So there's not a license.
(10:06):
Is there to the device manufacturers,
do they have to pay a license for?
No.
So they can actually adopt and customizethe open source code for their device
as well.
The great benefit here is becausethey're usually working with an OpenXR
standard,
a great chances that your device mightalready support and then they'll already
(10:27):
be supported by some of these browserskind of almost out of the box. So the
friction to get a browsersupported is basically super
low and super easy to do.
And from a softwaredevelopment perspective,
let's say I'm a developer andI want to make my experiences
(10:50):
available on all platformsthat have support for WebEx xr,
what are the challengesor what do I need to do?
Am I going to be going back to Unity?
Am I going to be goingto Unreal Engine there?
Many other choices aren't there?
Yeah, so I'm obviously building one,
so it's a little bit hardto not be biased here.
(11:13):
Unity does have an HML five target.
So if your project isalready based on Unity,
you can try exportingthe project through that.
Unreal Engine does not supportthe web directly, unfortunately.
So you will need to rebuild in a powerfulengine if you're starting out your
project. I recommendWonderland Engine of course,
and we can even good choice get yourproject from Unity ported over to
(11:35):
Wonderland Engine because we do care alot about performance and want to give
you the native performance in the browser.
And we believe that's one of thebiggest challenges that you might face
otherwise.
But there's a bunch of open sourceframeworks that you can use as well from
Pablo Js, a-frame through gs.
There's Play Canvas also provides avery nice workflow for building 3D
(11:56):
applications.
But so if you want a very unity likeworkflow go with Wonderland engine,
it's optimized for the web.
Really good. That's very good.
And I think now Wonderland Engine,
you're providing this developmentenvironment. If I understand correctly,
(12:18):
another thing I'm noticing,
a trend in terms of developmentenvironments is there's so
many low-code
develop solutions out there nowfor enterprise and industrial.
It's tricky because people,
they don't want to host anythingoutside of their network.
(12:42):
How does Wonderlandengine work in terms of
intranet? Or do I need toconnect to your services?
So Wonderland Engine is a applicationthat you download and install kind of like
any other software,
Photoshop or Blender or anything youmight be using for 3D development already
and s.
(13:02):
DK produces. Yeah.
Yeah, it's exactly. And software.
SK comes with a 3D editor and justpackages in less than a second and
optimizes all your assets in less thana second and produces a bunch of web
files. So that's h ml, JavaScript webassembly, and you can just host them,
whatever can host a static website. Thatmight be Amazon AWS or GitLab pages,
(13:23):
any free hosting solution or your internalintranet will be able to host that as
well. So no restrictions at all.
Right? Right. Okay, perfect.
So those are concernsthat when many people in
industrial settings here web,
they automatically think we'retalking about the public web and
(13:45):
not their own web implementations.
I think for enterprise,
the web is amazing because you alreadyhave the browser as a very secure sandbox
and usually you need IT whitelisting of various software.
And it's just a way biggerhurdle to go through all of that.
(14:06):
It really is. It's so,
so true that this questionof integration with existing
systems and if you already havea browser that supports Web XR
internally certified, it's ano-brainer, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah.
And if the performance isequal to what we would see in
(14:27):
Native. So those are really good points.
Yeah, I think what you just mentioned,if the performance is equal,
is one of the biggest unlocksbecause I believe that just by
design, the web is a better developmentplatform. You publish one application,
it runs everywhere.
You can just accessthe deployed app really
(14:49):
quickly. You're in control ofdeploying as much as you want.
You don't go through third party appstores, you don't have to pay fees there.
You don't have to wait for curation,
potentially have no control over whenis your release date, all of that.
So many advantages.
But that one thing that wasbasically unsolved was how the
performance is just notas on that same level.
(15:12):
And we believe we fixed that and kindof unlock all of these advantages of
the web four people.
So yeah, that's the breakthroughif you will. Exactly.
Is this maybe
secret sauce that you'vedeveloped to take the
most advantage of what'sout there and to unlock
(15:36):
these benefits of web-basedexperiences? Yeah. Fantastic.
Well, it was great to meet youin person at CES and likewise,
you have a very, veryexciting future ahead.
You've already been involvedin this field a very long time.
I think you are an earlyproponent of web-based
(15:57):
experiences and no, thank you for that.
I'm excited lookingforward to your future.
Likewise. Thank you forthe opportunity, Christine.
Was it? It's my pleasure. Thankyou. Bye-Bye, Jonathan. Bye.
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