XRWEB

the index of the immersive web

The web, one dimension at a time

the thesis

Every generation of the web added a dimension. Read that way, thirty years of version numbers turn into a ladder, and it gets easier to see which rung we are standing on.

Most of the web still lives on the second rung. The third is open to anyone with a link and a browser. The fourth is arriving in pieces.

  1. 1DWeb1

    Read-only, linear.

    The first web was a line. Someone published a page; you read it from the top to the bottom and followed a link to the next one. You could look, and that was all. It was already a great deal: anyone with an address could reach anything published. One direction of travel, one dimension.

  2. 2DWeb2

    Read and write: pages, feeds, you scroll.

    Then the page learned to listen. You could post, comment, upload and answer back, and the web spread out into a surface: profiles, timelines, feeds with no last page. It is still what most people mean when they say “the web”. You cross it with a thumb, and you stay on your side of the glass.

  3. 3DWeb3

    Ownership and decentralization: spaces you enter and walk.

    The third step gives the web depth, in two senses. What you hold on it can belong to you, with no single company standing in the middle. And a link can open a place: a room you step into, walk around, and share with whoever else followed the same address.

    Every entry in our directory is one of those places, and each one opens from a URL.

  4. 4DWeb4

    Time and senses.

    The fourth dimension has two halves, and it needs both. The first is time: memory, context, persistence. A world that remembers you were there, keeps track of what happened while you were away, and is still standing when you come back.

    The second is the senses. Sight and sound were the start. Now there is a vest that turns a hit into vibration across your torso, a device that releases the smell of a forest as you walk into one, a treadmill or a motion rig that lets your legs and your balance take part. The peripherals of the fourth dimension are already shipping, and we keep a list.

A note on “Web5”: the name promised a stage of the web, the concept was a tech stack (an identity platform on Bitcoin), and it was wound down in 2024.

One link, every way in

the medium

A WebXR address carries the world; the device you open it on decides how you meet it. The open medium lets one link reach all of these:

On a desktop screen
A window. You look in, and move with the mouse and keys.
On a phone in your hand
A magic window. Turn the phone and the view turns with it.
Through the phone’s camera
AR. The scene settles onto your floor or table and stays put while you walk around it.
In a headset
VR. You are inside, with the world on every side.
In a headset with passthrough
AR. The world comes into your room, and your walls stay where they are.
In phone goggles
Stereo, one image for each eye, where the browser allows it.

Not every browser ships every one of these yet, so each entry in the directory lists where it actually runs, and the devices themselves have a page of their own.

What the jump from 3D to 4D still needs

three pillars

A place you can walk into is already here. A place that remembers you, and that you can feel, asks for three things the open web does not yet share.

Money in the pocket. Functional assets that travel. A self that is recognised.

None of the three can belong to one world. They only make sense as shared open rules any world and any maker can use, which is why each one is a draft or a proposal.

We are building a proposed version of each, in the open, and the front page says exactly how early they are.

XR status

as of October 2026

As of October 2026, the ground under the open XR web is ready to build on. Each line below was checked this month, and each carries the year it became true.

The floor is ready. What is still missing are the shared rules on top of it, the three pillars above, and that is why building them starts now.