PROJECT FLOWERBED: A META OPEN SOURCE PROJECT

For years, Meta has been trying to encourage developers to build WebXR experiences — immersive VR/MR games and tools you can launch right from your browser.

Unfortunately, developers have been intimidated — it’s a confusing new technology that had a reputation for being janky-at-best.

After brainstorming through ways to solve this, we eventually landed on a “show, not tell” approach. Instead of describing in hopeful hypotheticals how cool WebXR experiences could be, we decided to just build our own!

As our vision took shape, I grew to lead content design, branding, user education, and project narrative development for this marquee title.

Our finished product, “Project Flowerbed,” became much more than a cozy VR gardening game. It was a showcase for what was possible with WebXR — demonstrating that you could launch high-quality, multiplayer experiences right from your browser.

We also made the whole thing open source, so developers could build their own experience right off of our framework, engine, and assets!

Project Flowerbed was announced at Meta Connect 2022, won “Entertainment Experience of the Year” at the 2023 Poly Awards, and has gone on to inspire (and power) dozens of WebXR games.

PRESS

AR Post / Project Flowerbed wins “Entertainment Experience of the Year” at the 2023 Poly Awards

UploadVR / These Open-Source Demos Prove WebXR Could Be Used For Full VR Games

MIXED Reality News / Check out Meta's most recent Quest tech demos

Meta Horizon Blog / Project Flowerbed: A WebXR Case Study