Google has been hyping up augmented reality on the web, and it’s easy to understand why — it promises an immersive experience without requiring a special app. But what does that look like in practice? The company now has an easy way to find out. It recently released Chacmool, a previously seen tech demo for Chrome Canary that uses the WebXR format to bring an educational AR experience to your browser. You’ll need an ARCore-compatible Android phone running Oreo in addition to Canary, but you’re good to go after that. You can walk around a Mesoamerican sculpture reading annotations as if you were visiting a museum exhibit without the usual cordons and glass cases.
Whether or not you see more of this will depend on the adoption of WebXR, not to mention more polished versions of Chrome and broader ARCore support. This may be as good as it gets for months, if not longer. Still, it’s a good peek at how you may interact with AR in the future, especially in educational settings where museum trips aren’t always an option.
