One month ago, Lytro announced a new open file format and open-source WebGL player, to be released “with the Lytro Illum on July 15”. The camera’s first shipments of the Lytro Illum have been delayed to the end of July, and July 15 quietly went by without release of either the new file format or WebGL player.

Today, the company has published a support document for the new WebGL Advanced Player, which was apparently just integrated into Lytro’s website.

According to the information provided, the player is still in Beta and uses WebGL 1.0.
WebGL is supported by the latest versions of popular browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari, the latter requiring users to activate WebGL in Settings.
As for hardware, Lytro recommends “something performance oriented, bought new in 2012 or later” and notes that not all recent graphics cards support WebGL either.

If your browser meets the requirements, you’ll be able to switch to the advanced player directly when viewing a Lytro picture on the web. With a Lytro user account, there’s even an option under “profile settings” to make the WebGL player your default player.

When we open up a picture, we can see the gear symbol on the right for an instance before it disappears. This either means that it’s time to upgrade our hardware, or that Lytro is still testing the player internally before releasing the player to the public.
Either way, for now we can’t test what features Lytro is talking about when refering to the “really cool things” that the new player will do with living pictures.

Update 2014-07-20: Readers Axel and Sean report that the new player supports simultaneous refocus and perspective shift (the old player could only do one or the other), as well as “slideshow” and “overscan” full-screen modes (“the image is resized to fit the display while everything else is backed out, apart from controls and social media buttons). We appreciate the tipps, please keep them coming!

Below is a copy of the full support article (taken on 2014-07-08 21:00):
As time passes, you may want to find the original source for an updated version.

Lytro's Advanced Player (Beta) Requirements

Can I use Lytro’s new Advanced Player (Beta)?

Maybe!

The Lytro Advanced Player is bleeding-edge software that does some really cool things with living pictures that can’t be done with our Standard Player.  The Advanced Player uses a technology called WebGL to make the magic happen. But…

This is beta software!  It’s fresh out of the lab and not extensively tested.  It may freeze, crash your browser, require force quitting, or open wormholes to other dimensions!

Still with us?  Great!  If you’ve got a modern, performance-oriented system with a great graphics card (say, 2012 or more recent) we think you should give it a try.  It’ll be an adventure!

If you’re interested in giving it a shot, read on.

• Both your web browser and graphics card must support WebGL 1.0. (You can check for basic WebGL support at get.webgl.org)
• NOTE:  Your browser must support WebGL version 1.0; any WebGL versions less than 1.0 will not work.
• System requirements for a good WebGL experience are relatively high and many of today’s platforms don’t support it, or performance may be subpar.

Supported browsers and platforms:

• Google Chrome (latest version)
• With a capable graphics card and latest drivers
• Mozilla Firefox (latest version)
• With a capable graphics card and latest drivers
• Safari (latest version) on OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion.
• You must enable WebGL – Safari disables WebGL by default. Instructions for enabling WebGL in Safari can be found here.
• Have all available OS X updates applied

Unsupported & use at your own risk browsers:

• Opera (latest version):  with a capable graphics card and updated drivers on the latest versions.
• You must enable WebGL – Opera disables WebGL by default.  
• Instructions for enabling WebGL in Opera can be found here.
• Note – While it should work, Opera has only had very minimal testing.  If you’re using it, we’d like to hear about your experiences.  
• Internet Explorer: MSIE does not provide WebGL 1.0 support at this time; thus, MSIE is not a supported browser.
• Mobile: Due to performance issues with mobile platforms, WebGL is not supported.
• Living picture animations are also not supported in mobile

Hardware Requirements

• We don’t have specific requirements at this time, but you should be running something performance oriented, bought new in 2012 or later.  
• NOTE – Not all graphics cards are going to support WebGL, even recent ones.  Check the specifications of your specific graphics card.
• Earlier systems may be able to run the Advanced player, but performance and frame rate may be poor

How Do I Switch to the Advanced Player?

• If you are using a supported browser, you will be given the option to enable the Advanced player via the Settings icon.
• If you are using an unsupported browser, you will not have the option to enable the Advanced Player.
• https://pictures.lytro.com/users/edit

Using the Advanced Player By Default

If you confirm you have a supported system and always want to use the advanced player by default, you can do so in your user profile settings (https://pictures.lytro.com/users/edit)