What is WebRTC (Is it baked into the browser?)

Question

The explanation for WebRTC online in the docs says it is an "An open framework for the web that enables Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities in the browser." Is this developed by individual vendors (Chrome, Safari, ect) and then built into the browser? I understand it is a framework that enables alot of cool and interesting things but how does this happen? Is it baked into the browser?

Answer 1

The main implementation of WebRTC is open source, mainly developed by google, implemented in C++, and others can take it and use it. You can see the WebRTC source repository.

Yes, it is baked into modern browsers. See WebRTC browser support.

It is worth noting that there are ports and wrappers, plus other implementations of the WebRTC protocols, which may allow other applications aside from browsers to communicate with WebRTC.

Using WebRTC outside the browser can be useful for making chat, video-chat and file transfer applications. Plus, this is of particular interest for game engines that may allow to use WebRTC as network multiplayer infrastructure (in particular those which allow you to build for web and desktop).

The Godot Game Engine has added support for WebRTC (documentation). Also Unity has developed a WebRTC library (repostory) to use with the engine.

See also awesome-webrtc.