Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] WebXR Depth API (#550)

> Hi @bialpio We're just considering this issue in our virtual f2f and seeing if it's possible to close it. Can you let us know current status of this API? It looks like it's in Chrome 90 but there are no signals from other implementers? Is this currently marked as an "unofficial draft" in the spec. Is this headed for the working group, or does this remain a community group "report"? Thanks for any info you can provide.

The spec was [moved](https://github.com/immersive-web/depth-sensing/pull/22) to WG mid-March, but the bikeshed change that reflects this [landed](https://github.com/immersive-web/depth-sensing/pull/25) only 2 days ago. There are no signals from other implementers that I know of (see [Firefox](https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/487), [Safari](https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2021-February/031695.html)).

> (...) ie: fingerprinting and/or precise gear detection. It would be good to let the user "degrade" the experience to something more basic to mitigate that.

I think it could theoretically be used for fingerprinting (e.g. an app could record the data and try to create a map of the environment & use it to distinguish one user from another when they visit the page again and enter another AR session). This is something that I touched upon in the response to Q12 in [Security & Privacy Questionnaire](https://github.com/immersive-web/depth-sensing/blob/main/security-privacy-questionnaire.md). Note that hit-testing could be used in a similar way, but depth API exposes this information with higher resolution.

I like the idea of "degrading" the experience by the user! I think the specification currently leaves space for that - we allow the UAs to [limit the resolution of the depth buffer](https://immersive-web.github.io/depth-sensing/#limit-the-amount-of-information) and expose this step directly in the algorithms now - this could definitely be something that the UAs could expose a UI around. Current implementation in Chrome limits the resolution to 240x180 - if more entries are available in the depth buffer, we will not return anything back to the app as we do not currently attempt to reduce the resolution.

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