OrientationSensor

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The OrientationSensor interface of the Sensor APIs is the base class for orientation sensors. This interface cannot be used directly. Instead it provides properties and methods accessed by interfaces that inherit from it.

This feature may be blocked by a Permissions Policy set on your server.

Interfaces based on OrientationSensor

Below is a list of interfaces based on the OrientationSensor interface.

Instance properties

OrientationSensor.quaternion Read only: Returns a four element Array whose elements contain the components of the unit quaternion representing the device's orientation.

Instance methods

OrientationSensor.populateMatrix(): Populates the given object with the rotation matrix based on the latest sensor reading.

Examples

Basic Example

The following example, which is loosely based on Intel's Orientation Phone demo, instantiates an AbsoluteOrientationSensor with a frequency of 60 times a second. On each reading it uses OrientationSensor.quaternion to rotate a visual model of a phone.

const options = { frequency: 60, referenceFrame: "device" };
const sensor = new AbsoluteOrientationSensor(options);

sensor.addEventListener("reading", () => {
  // model is a Three.js object instantiated elsewhere.
  model.quaternion.fromArray(sensor.quaternion).inverse();
});
sensor.addEventListener("error", (error) => {
  if (event.error.name === "NotReadableError") {
    console.log("Sensor is not available.");
  }
});
sensor.start();

Permissions Example

Using orientation sensors requires requesting permissions for multiple device sensors. Because the Permissions interface uses promises, a good way to request permissions is to use Promise.all.

const sensor = new AbsoluteOrientationSensor();
Promise.all([
  navigator.permissions.query({ name: "accelerometer" }),
  navigator.permissions.query({ name: "magnetometer" }),
  navigator.permissions.query({ name: "gyroscope" }),
]).then((results) => {
  if (results.every((result) => result.state === "granted")) {
    sensor.start();
    // …
  } else {
    console.log("No permissions to use AbsoluteOrientationSensor.");
  }
});

Specifications

Specification
Orientation Sensor # orientationsensor-interface

Browser compatibility

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