If you use a virtual reality headset, there’s a possibility that you’ve used Firefox Reality. As part of a regular clean-up of the projects it works on, Mozilla has decided to stop work on Firefox Reality and hand it over to Igalia. Firefox Reality will be removed from app stores in the coming weeks and replaced with Wolvic which will be available starting next week.
Explaining why it chose the name Wolvic, Igalia said:
“[T]here is something of a tradition among browsers to have an animal association. There is, of course, Firefox. Brave has a lion as a mascot, there are Puma and Dolphin browsers, and many smaller and historical browsers and projects within the browser space are named after animals. Since our initial effort takes over where the fox left off, keeping it in the canine family felt nice, while recognizing that it will follow its own evolutionary path … it doesn’t hurt that the name looks cool and the domain was available.”
If you were particularly invested in Firefox Reality, there’s probably little reason to be concerned. Firefox Reality is not the first product that Mozilla stopped working on which later did well, other examples of projects that started life at Mozilla then broke away include WebAssembly, Rust, and Servo.
According to the new Wolvic website, a beta version of the browser will initially launch on Huawei’s AppGallery and Meta’s Oculus Quest Store. The site says that the first task will be to bring the browser to standalone systems such as Huawei VR Glass, HTC Vive Focus, Oculus, Pico Interactive, and Lynx. It is also hoping to work with Qualcomm and Lenovo to get the browser working on their XR devices. Hopefully, it won’t take too long for Wolvic to arrive in all the stores that Firefox Reality is currently available in.
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