JanusVR was a company based in San Mateo, California, and Toronto, Ontario, that developed immersive web browsing software.[1] It was founded by James McCrae and Karan Singh in December 2014.[2] Named after Janus, the Roman God of passages, JanusVR portrayed web content in multi-dimensional spaces interconnected by portals. The company shut down in 2019, but released their code as open source in the hopes that the community would continue its development.[3][4]
The founders of JanusVR came from the Dynamic Graphics Project, Computer Science at the University of Toronto.[5]
Development of JanusVR began in the middle of 2013, with early progress documented on the Oculus VR Rift Forum, and subsequently in the JanusVR subreddit. In August 2015, JanusVR joined the Boost.VC accelerator program, and raised a Seed Series round with Lerer Hippeau Ventures [6] as the lead investor in January 2016.
The JanusVR platform comprises a suite of software, including:
JanusVR: a standalone web authoring and browsing tool. All existing web content can be viewed, transformed or re-interpreted interactively within JanusVR for desktop VR hardware.
JanusWeb: a WebGL-based version of JanusVR, viewable through existing web browsers, with support for mobile VR hardware.
Presence Server: open-source server software.
JanusVR markup + javascript: content in JanusVR builds on existing web markup and protocols, augmented by an XML-like markup and javascript.
Exporters: comprise tools to export content from popular modeling, animation and gaming software like Unity, Unreal, Blender, Maya and Sketch-up into JanusVR.
Vesta: a free web-hosting and content-sharing community integrated with JanusVR.
