Case Study: How a Small Team Migrated a VR Meeting App into a Web-first React Product

Hook: When your niche VR product suddenly needs to be a mainstream web app

Teams building immersive VR collaboration tools face a brutal reality in 2026: the market is consolidating and giants like Meta have shifted strategy away from standalone VR meeting apps. If your product started as a niche VR meeting room (think Workrooms-style), stakeholders now ask a hard question: how do we replatform to a web-first collaboration product without losing the core value—presence, low-latency audio/video, and shared context?

This case study walks through how a small cross-functional team of 8 turned a VR-first meeting app into a production-ready web collaboration product built in React. You'll get the business rationale, stakeholder playbook, architecture patterns, concrete migration steps, and code-level examples you can reuse.

The context in 2026 and why web-first matters

By late 2025 and early 2026 the industry saw a clear shift: Meta discontinued the standalone Workrooms app and scaled back Reality Labs investments. Enterprises still want immersive coordination but are less willing to standardize on headsets. The practical takeaway for product teams: prioritize reach. A web-first strategy dramatically increases addressable users, reduces support overhead for hardware, and speeds adoption.

Bottom line: shipping a web-first React product reduces platform risk and lets you focus on collaboration primitives—presence, shared state, and signaling—rather than device management.

Business decisions: stakeholders, KPIs, and product scope

1) Reframe stakeholder alignment

First, map stakeholders and their priorities:

• Founders / Execs: minimize revenue risk and accelerate user growth.
• VR power users: want fidelity and spatial features.
• Enterprise IT/Admins: care about device management, SSO, compliance.
• Sales & Customer Success: need clear use cases for demos and measurable ROI.

Run a two-week discovery with representatives from each group. The output: prioritized use cases for an MVP web experience (e.g., audio/video meetings, shared whiteboard, presence list, persistent rooms) and a clear must-have vs nice-to-have matrix. That makes later trade-offs defensible.

2) Define business KPIs tied to migration

Examples of KPIs the team committed to:

• Activation: time-to-first-call ≤ 90s for new web users
• Engagement: DAU / MAU for meetings & collaborative features
• Retention: 30-day retention after web onboarding
• Performance: median P99 signaling latency & initial page load
• Revenue: trial-to-paid conversion within 14 days

3) Pricing and GTM

The team created a dual GTM: keep a small, premium VR offering for high-fidelity enterprise customers while launching a web-first tier with simpler avatars and a freemium model. This balanced near-term revenue with the strategic shift to scale.

Technical strategy: principles and architecture

The technical plan prioritized three principles:

• Incremental migration: support VR and web in parallel—no big-bang rewrite.
• Single source of truth: unify backend services to serve both clients.
• Progressive enhancement: the web app should degrade gracefully when features (like spatial audio) aren't available.

Architecture overview

The team standardized on four layers:

1. API and Identity: a unified REST/GraphQL API and SSO integration (OIDC/SAML).
2. Signaling layer: WebSocket/Janus/LiveKit to handle real-time signaling and room management.
3. Media plane: WebRTC for web clients and native transport for VR clients; re-use TURN/STUN infra.
4. Frontend: a React monorepo with shared component library and feature flags.

Why React in 2026?

React remained the pragmatic choice in 2026: enterprise familiarity + mature ecosystem. The team used React 19 (Concurrent and streaming improvements are mainstream by 2026), Server Components for initial payload reduction, and Suspense-driven data fetching. These patterns accelerated time-to-interactive while keeping the UI code composable and testable.

Replatforming plan: step-by-step

Phase 0 — Audit & spikes (2–4 weeks)

Run three technical spikes:

• Proof-of-concept WebRTC meeting with 6 participants to validate media stack and edge-first signaling and TURN costs.
• Minimal React UI implementing presence and room join flow, measuring cold load and TTI.
• Backend compatibility test: can existing room logic and persistence serve web clients?

Phase 1 — MVP web product (8–12 weeks)

MVP feature set focused on the high-value collaboration primitives:

• Authentication (SSO + email flows)
• Room list & persistent rooms
• Audio/video via WebRTC
• Shared whiteboard (canvas + synchronization)
• Presence & basic avatars (2D icons + name)

Phase 2 — polish & parity (8–12 weeks)

Add more advanced features and parity where it matters:

• Screen sharing & remote control
• Breakout rooms
• Advanced moderation & recording (compliance)
• Performance optimizations and progressive enhancement for low-bandwidth users

Phase 3 — growth & consolidation

Use data to guide feature investment, sunset marginal VR-only features, and scale infra via multi-region edge deployments.

Frontend patterns and code examples

Key frontend choices that paid off:

• Monorepo using pnpm workspaces for shared types and components.
• React Server Components (RSC) for initial HTML rendering and lower JS payloads.
• Client components using Suspense + streaming fetch for presence and room state.
• Feature flags (LaunchDarkly, Split, or an open-source alternative) to roll out progressively.

Presence component (TypeScript + React)

Below is a simplified presence component using WebSockets for signaling. This is intentionally minimal—production code needs reconnection logic, backoff, and token refresh.

import React, {useEffect, useReducer} from 'react'

type Presence = {id: string; name: string; online: boolean}

type State = {list: Presence[]}

action type Action = {type: 'sync'; payload: Presence[]} | {type: 'update'; payload: Presence}

function reducer(state: State, action: Action): State {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'sync':
      return {list: action.payload}
    case 'update':
      return {list: state.list.map(p => p.id === action.payload.id ? action.payload : p)}
    default:
      return state
  }
}

export default function PresenceList({roomId}: {roomId: string}) {
  const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, {list: []})

  useEffect(() => {
    const ws = new WebSocket('wss://api.example.com/rooms/' + roomId + '/presence')

    ws.addEventListener('message', ev => {
      const msg = JSON.parse(ev.data)
      if (msg.type === 'sync') dispatch({type: 'sync', payload: msg.users})
      if (msg.type === 'update') dispatch({type: 'update', payload: msg.user})
    })

    return () => ws.close()
  }, [roomId])

  return (
    

      {state.list.map(u => (
        
{u.name} {u.online ? '●' : '○'}
      ))}
    
  )
}

Actionable tip: keep presence and signaling small—prefer an event-driven model instead of polling. Use binary messages or compact JSON to reduce bandwidth.

Media stack decisions (WebRTC & co.)

We chose WebRTC for browser media and a shared TURN farm that previously served VR clients. Key operational choices:

• Use SFU (LiveKit or Janus) rather than full mesh for rooms above 4 participants.
• Provision TURN as autoscaling cloud instances with metrics-driven autoscaling.
• Instrument P99 end-to-end latency and packet loss to detect degradation quickly.

By measuring quality-of-experience (QoE) and implementing graceful degradation (e.g., audio-only fallback), the team maintained business SLAs while moving to the web.

UX: translating spatial VR concepts into 2D

One of the hardest product problems is preserving the sense of presence without spatial depth. The team prioritized three UX moves:

1. Contextual persistence: keep shared artifacts (whiteboards, documents) visible across sessions and devices.
2. Micro-presence: animated 2D avatars, directional audio cues, and nameplates replicate some spatialness.
3. Intent surfaces: expressive signals like 'raise hand', 'focus mode', and ephemeral pointers help coordinate attention.

Practical experiment: replace 3D avatars with 2D expressive stickers and measure engagement. For many teams, presence + good audio > 3D fidelity.

Data migration and backward compatibility

Shared rooms, recordings, and persisted boards must be accessible to both VR and web clients. The backend used an API-first model with these patterns:

• Schema versioning for persisted room state
• Adapters that map VR-specific state (e.g., 3D transforms) to web-friendly structures
• Compatibility tests that run across both clients during CI

Actionable checklist:

• Export a sample of VR room state and run conversion scripts to verify fidelity.
• Provide a 'migration mode' where legacy clients see a compatibility banner; allow rollback of conversions.
• Keep APIs backward compatible for at least two major releases.

Performance, bundle size and modern build tooling

In 2026, bundlers like Vite and Turbopack are mature. The team adopted:

• RSC + edge rendering to reduce client JS on first load.
• Code-splitting by route and feature flags to push heavy features (whiteboard editor) only when needed.
• Asset CDNs and image optimization (AVIF/WebP) for avatars & thumbnails.
• Performance budgets enforced in CI (TTI, LCP, JS bundle sizes).

Result: median time-to-interactive dropped from 6s to 1.8s on 4G devices—critical for adoption among non-VR users. For developers working remotely, we also invested in tooling and occasional hardware stipends (see compact workstations and remote dev kits) to keep iteration fast (compact mobile workstations).

Security, compliance, and device management

Enterprise customers demanded SSO, audit logs, and data residency. The team implemented:

• OIDC + SAML integrations; role-based access control (RBAC)
• Encrypted recordings and optional customer-managed keys (BYOK)
• Admin dashboards for session monitoring and device access policies

Legal and compliance workstreams were parallel to product development to avoid late-stage blockers. For enterprise procurement and public sector customers we referenced guidance like the FedRAMP buyer's guide when planning hosting and audit needs.

Testing, observability and launch

Testing strategy combined unit tests, integration tests for signaling flows, and synthetic monitoring of calls. Observability included:

• Tracing for join flows (auth → room lookup → signaling handshake → ICE connection)
• Real-time QoE dashboards (packet loss, jitter, join failures)
• Feature telemetry (who used whiteboard within first 7 days)

Launch approach: invite-only beta + feature flag rollouts. Early adopters gave feedback that led to three rapid iterations on the onboarding flow and lowering friction for first call.

People & process: how a small team stayed nimble

With only eight people, the team relied on tight alignment and cross-discipline ownership:

• Two-week sprints with weekly demos for stakeholders
• Rotating on-call so engineers owned the live product experience early
• API contracts reviewed as part of PRs to avoid backend/frontend drift

Decision-making parity: product + one senior engineer made scope calls quickly. This reduced debate overhead and kept momentum.

Outcomes & metrics

Within 6 months of the web-first launch the team reported:

• 3x increase in signups—web lowered onboarding friction
• 50% reduction in device-related support tickets
• Trial-to-paid conversion improved by 20% after optimizing onboarding
• Median P99 signaling latency under 200ms in primary regions

These metrics validated the business case: replatforming reduced platform risk while growing reach and revenue.

Lessons learned and recommendations

1) Keep the backend shared

Maintaining a single API surface reduced duplicated effort and kept coherence between VR and web clients.

2) Prioritize collaboration primitives over parity

Don't try to replicate every VR mechanic in 2D. Identify the primitives that drive collaboration—presence, audio, shared artifacts—and optimize those first.

3) Instrument early and often

Telemetry told the team where to cut features and where to invest. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Use dashboards and KPI tooling to track P99, join success, and feature adoption.

4) Use progressive enhancement

Design the web client to provide a good experience on low-bandwidth networks and then add advanced features for capable devices.

5) Communicate clearly with customers

When shifting product strategy, signal to customers how the change benefits them. Offer upgrade paths or migration support for VR-dependent workflows.

Concrete checklist for your migration

1. Run stakeholder discovery and define MVP scope
2. Spike WebRTC + React proof-of-concepts
3. Unify backend services and version APIs
4. Build a React monorepo with shared types and components
5. Implement SSO, RBAC, and compliance hooks early
6. Instrument QoE and rollout feature flags
7. Beta launch with telemetry-driven iterations

Looking ahead: 2026+ trends and predictions

As device strategies shift, teams will increasingly adopt a hybrid approach: web-first core features with optional immersive experiences for high-value customers. Expect these trends:

• Edge-first signaling: more signaling and lightweight compute at the edge to lower latency.
• AI-assisted collaboration: real-time summarization and context-aware highlights will be built into meeting flows.
• Composable collaboration: microfrontends and embeddable collaboration widgets will let teams integrate meeting surfaces into many apps.

Those trends strengthen the case for a web-first React product: flexible deployment, rapid iteration, and easier integration with AI services and edge platforms.

Final takeaways

Migrating a VR-first app to a web-first React product is both a technical and organizational journey. Focus on the core collaboration primitives, keep backend services shared, instrument everything, and choose an incremental path that keeps customers supported. The payoff: broader reach, faster iteration, and a product resilient to shifting hardware strategies.

If you're starting this migration: run a short spike, validate media stack and onboarding time, and get a measurable MVP shipped in 8–12 weeks. That cadence keeps momentum and gives you real user data to guide the rest of the replatform.

Call to action

Want a migration checklist tailored to your product? Download our free migration playbook for React collaboration apps or book a short consult with our engineering lead to review your architecture and roadmap.

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