Google Chrome seems ready to offer Oculus hardware support according to a user on Reddit who has pointed out that a flag exists which lets users enable the browser to support Oculus VR content. As shown in the image below which displays the flag, if you enable the option then Chrome will show Oculus VR content in the headset. There is at least one caveat and that’s the fact that only Windows 10 devices are currently supported. The user on Reddit who posted the image and goes by the name of st6315 notes that anyone with an Oculus Rift may want to give this new flag a shot as it may let Chrome output WebVR experiences to the Oculus Rift headset.
Another user points out that this could lead to Chrome browser-based games in VR through an Oculus Rift. If it does indeed lead to that and this is part of Google’s intention then it could also open up the door for Chrome to support outputting browser-based games to other VR headsets as well, such as the HTC Vive and Vive Pro, and various Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
With Chrome now supporting Oculus hardware, Rift users will now have a proper web browser to use, as the official browser from Oculus is still not yet available. It also sort of puts the Rift on par with Google’s Daydream headset when it comes to browsing and native WebVR content, as Google launched WebVR support for Daydream back in 2017. Worth mentioning is that a quick search for Oculus on the chrome://flags page from a machine running the latest version of Windows 10 did not reveal the same flag shown in the image below and as described by the Reddit post, so there may be other factors to take into account that will get this to show up, if you’re someone who has an Oculus Rift headset and wants to get this enabled. It’s also possible that you may need to update to the latest version of Chrome if you’re not seeing this flag as one user in the comments mentions that this was the reason they weren’t able to see the flag at first.