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Browser makers go for WebGL

August 4th, 2009 (Visited 1355 times) Tags: khronos, opengl, web3d

Movement happened today on the “built-in 3d support for the web” front as a whole bunch of folks announced support for the Khronos standard, which basically puts OpenGL with Javascript bindings in an HTML5 canvas.

At today’s sessions of the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in New Orleans, a group of hardware and software makers that includes browser makers Mozilla, Opera and Google announced their plans to deliver built-in 3D graphics in Web pages that won’t require a plug-in or add-on to the browser. Early adopters may get to try it in a few months. The rest of us will probably see it arrive on our screens the second half of next year.

– via Browser makers announce support for built-in 3D graphics | VentureBeat.

No IE, and no Apple. But this looks like the sort of open thing Apple would be inclined to support, I think.

Target date? “A first public release in first half of 2010.”

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Jason Booth said on August 4th, 2009 at 6:16 pm:

Which means we can expect it to be standard in 4 years plus whatever delay MS ads. Gah, the web… Turning a 2ghz dual core with a terreflop of pixel pushing power into a pentium at 80mhz..

Sente said on August 4th, 2009 at 11:14 pm:

If it is not based on DirectX I guess MS won’t touch it. Probably will release a “competitive standard” with some “improvements” to WebGL a bit later.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on August 5th, 2009 at 4:28 am:

Thank you for keeping tabs on new and intersting stuff! raphkoster.com and osnews.com are now the only news-sites I check regularly… ;-*

Amaranthar said on August 5th, 2009 at 7:00 am:

I assume this would be very good for browser based games? What about other games, can this be used wholly or in part with any other kinds of games?

len said on August 5th, 2009 at 7:12 am:

More content kudzu. More graphics boards to replace. Great.

Rog said on August 10th, 2009 at 8:13 am:

I see the whole thing as positive. Sure, there’s scepticism over the snail’s pace of adoption and this is something in its infancy, but if it flies, look at the strong points:

- It could end the era of crappy baseline graphics (IE: Intel chipsets). If capable hardware is needed for browsing, it’ll drive the industry to being well, a little more capable.

So those bemoaning necessary upgrades, think at least that the upgrades would mean more than they do today. The complaints IMHO today are valid because the upgrades are so hollow outside of the triple-AAA games market.

- Games in the browser won’t have to ‘fake it’ via plugins. Some of them (Quake Live, FreeRealms come to mind) fake it pretty good, but better integration would make this so much easier and seamless.

- Consistency with games, regardless of platform. This is the pro-active solution, far far better than WINE, etc.. Apple isn’t on board atm but if the standard gains traction they’ll come on board. For me personally, if this works out, I’ll finally be able to kiss bye-bye to Windows.