WebGL reaches draft standard form

 Posted by (Visited 7571 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Dec 112009
 

Khronos has announced that its standard for deploying OpenGL in JavaScript has reached “draft standard” — which means that it is inviting comment from developers. There’s still a ways to go:

But don’t hold your breath for Web-based first-person shooters that rival native applications. First, even if 3D is accelerated, there are plenty of other processing and user interface constraints on Web applications. Second, even after WebGL is standardized, it must be built into browsers, people must upgrade to those new versions, and programmers must learn how to support the technology.

With draft standard, 3D Web closer to reality | Deep Tech – CNET News.

That said, all the browser makers except Microsoft are backing the potential new standard (though Google has O3D going as well, of course).

It might also breathe new life into VRML/X3D — there’s efforts afoot to marry the two.

Social & Online Games Summit at GDC

 Posted by (Visited 6596 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Dec 102009
 

I’m the Summit Chair for the Social & Online Games Summit at GDC this year — what the old Worlds in Motion Summit has evolved into. Gamasutra has posted an article on the recently announced initial line-up.

We’re trying to sit at the convergence of a few trends here: casual games moving online, online games moving social, and social games moving virtual, all of which are sort of happening at once, albeit at different speeds. It’s going to be a couple of years, I suspect, before this all shakes out, but it’s fascinating to watch. The Summit should be a lot of fun and highly interesting. We’re making a big point of trying to build bridges across these silos, with lectures and panels on things like adding social gaming elements to virtual worlds, migrating from AAA games to social games, migrating casual games to Facebook, etc.

You can read more about the Summit here.

A few neat little games

 Posted by (Visited 6881 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Dec 082009
 

Just a quick post to note some games that have caught my eye lately. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen mention of some of these already.