Documentation

Getting Started

DiscoVR Engine is a framework built on top of A-Frame for building interactive XR experiences — virtual tours, metaverses, VR games — declaratively, with a single <discovr> tag in an HTML page.

It is device-agnostic: it runs on any browser capable of running A-Frame, including desktop, mobile, and VR headsets.

#Requirements

• A modern browser with WebGL support (and WebXR support if you want VR headset compatibility).
• No build tools, bundler, or install step. DiscoVR Engine is loaded directly by the browser as a native ES module, and it fetches everything else it needs on its own.

#Installation

Add DiscoVR Engine to your page by loading discovr-core.js as a module script:

<script type="module" src="https://core.discovr-engine.eu/discovr-core.js"></script>

It must be loaded with type="module" (not as a classic script), since it relies on native ES module imports.

#Your first scene

Add a <discovr> tag anywhere in the page body. Its attributes configure the experience; no other markup is required to get a scene on screen.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>My DiscoVR Experience</title>
</head>
<body>
    <discovr presets="defaultScene:true;defaultLights:true;defaultContents:true"></discovr>

    <script type="module" src="https://core.discovr-engine.eu/discovr-core.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Opening this page will:

1. Show a loading screen while DiscoVR Engine fetches A-Frame and its own components.
2. Create an <a-scene> with a default environment, ambient and directional lighting, and a couple of test objects (a prototype cube and an interactive box).
3. Hide the loading screen once the scene has rendered.

The presets attribute above enables demo content so you have something to look at right away. A real experience typically drops defaultScene/defaultContents entirely (or sets them to false) and adds its own content instead of the built-in test objects — the scene still gets a full, customizable setup (background, renderer, shadows, fog, ...) either way, see the Configuration Reference for the scene* keys that control it.

#What's next

• Configuration reference — the full list of <discovr> attributes (environment, player rig, teleport, networking, audio, UI).
• Programmatic scene building — the DiscoVR class, for building (part of) a scene in JavaScript instead of tag attributes.
• Examples — complete pages for common scenarios: a virtual tour, a multiplayer room, a physics playground, an embedded widget.