PERFORMANCE-AWARE SHADER AUTHORING FOR WEB-BASED VIRTUAL REALITY DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

WebXR allows users to create and experience virtual, augmented, and mixed reality content directly through popular web browsers, making these immersive experiences widely accessible. However, this ease of access introduces significant performance challenges, particularly on standalone VR headsets that have limited processing power. Maintaining high frame rates (typically 72–90 Hz) and low motion-to-photon latency (under 20 ms) is critical to preventing user discomfort. Yet, content creators, often artists without deep graphics engineering expertise face a performance knowledge gap, struggling to anticipate the performance costs associated with various shader functions. Current WebXR optimization workflows are predominantly reactive, involving a time-consuming cycle of authoring, deployment, profiling with tools like Chrome DevTools or Spector.js, and iterative refinement. This post-hoc approach provides limited guidance during the crucial design phase and is inefficient, especially given the performance variability across diverse device and browser combinations. Therefore, there is a clear need for preemptive performance feedback mechanisms integrated into artist-friendly shader authoring tools.