WebGL Support Begins to Arrive in WebKit

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/13/webgl-support-begins-to-arrive-in-webkit/)

Wolfire Games' blog (http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/09/preview-of-webkits-webgl-canvas3d/) reveals that WebGL has quietly been integrated into the latest Webkit (http://webkit.org/) sources. WebGL is a standards based (http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/khronos-webgl-initiative-hardware-accelerated-3d-graphics-internet/) initiative which is bringing hardware accelerated 3D graphics to web browsers without the need for browser plug-ins. The WebGL working group is defining a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0 to enable rich 3D graphics within a browser on any platform supporting the OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics standards. The working group is developing the specification to provide content portability across diverse browsers and platforms, including the capability of portable, secure shader programs. Opera, Mozilla and Google have already committed to WebGL and the inclusion of it in Webkit means it should eventually trickle down into Safari as well. These demos show them running in early versions of Webkit/Safari.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rpKpj6ZO9w

Wolfire speculates that if it gains widespread adoption, "full-fledged 3d video games" could becoming more common on the web. Like many of the other emerging web technologies, this could threaten to dislodge Adobe's Flash technology.

WebGL is not yet available in the nightly builds of Webkit and is currently only available if you compile the source yourself.

Article Link: WebGL Support Begins to Arrive in WebKit (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/13/webgl-support-begins-to-arrive-in-webkit/)

[840quadra]

Wow. The concept of 3d web based games is amazing. And I would love to see how far developers can take this!

http://forums.macrumors.com/image.php?u=47064&dateline=1165207334&type=profile

[sammich]

Lol. The first teapot demo ran at 'infinity' FPS for a split second.

Must be good!

[ltldrummerboy]

This looks amazing. I hope web developers start using this within in the next year.

[PBF]

I hate Safari so much that I have switched to Chrome. Even freaking WebKit beachballs on me. :mad: Oh, why is Chrome so good? :(

[designgeek]

I bet I would be excited if I knew what this was.

[spillproof]

I'm lovin' the future of gaming. This with the ideas from Project Natal, ya, heaven.

[John.B]

Wolfire speculates that if it gains widespread adoption, "full-fledged 3d video games" could becoming more common on the web. Like many of the other emerging web technologies, this could threaten to dislodge Adobe's Flash technology.
I'd be happy if it just didn't run like asssss the way Flash does on my Macs.

What hardware is required, what's in the iPhone 3GS and the newest touch?

[str1f3]

I hate Safari so much that I have switched to Chrome. Even freaking WebKit beachballs on me. :mad: Oh, why is Chrome so good? :(

I don't know what you mean. The differences in speed between Safari and Chrome are virtually nonexistent since the move that Safari has made to 64bit in Snow Leopard.

As for the demo I'm not only excited for gaming but for web design as well. The sooner we get rid of Flash the better. My only concern is that IE will not adopt these features and push Silverlight instead, therefore slowing down the pace of adoption. Flash is becoming too much of a security issue & lacks stability.

[DMann]

The arrival of WebGL is huge, as it will soon emerge as a game changer for 3D rendering and design on the web.

[ravenvii]

I wholly support the push to marginalize Flash. If only YouTube would get rid of Flash and switch to another standard, it will be a *huge* boon to this movement.

Google seems to be behind this movement, and yet they hold the key (Google Video and YouTube both use Flash). C'mon Google!

And re: Chrome, it's an great browser, I admit that I really do like it in spite of myself (I don't like the theme!) and if not for MobileMe (I likes me some bookmark syncing) I would probably be using it on Windows. Just to note; Chrome uses WebKit like Safari does, so either you use Chrome or Safari, we all win.

[wheelhot]

I hate Safari so much that I have switched to Chrome. Even freaking WebKit beachballs on me. Oh, why is Chrome so good?

Huh? What you mean, both Safari and Chrome uses WebKit as its web browser engine.

As for the demo I'm not only excited for gaming but for web design as well. The sooner we get rid of Flash the better. My only concern is that IE will not adopt these features and push Silverlight instead, therefore slowing down the pace of adoption. Flash is becoming too much of a security issue & lacks stability.

Yup, typical Microsoft. IE is still the worst browser on earth, regardless of the "improvements" in the latest version of IE.

The arrival of WebGL is huge, as it will soon emerge as a game changer for 3D rendering and design on the web.

Yup, as long as IE decides to play along nicely with WebGL, otherwise, it will have a much slower adoption. DIE IE DIE!!!

[Beric]

Anything that kills Flash can't be bad. Especially with the way it treats Macs, and even PC's.

[BongoBanger]

This is good news.

For those of you interested in non-Flash on-line gaming you should check out Quake Live for a tatse of what can be done.

[Shookster]

Yup, as long as IE decides to play along nicely with WebGL, otherwise, it will have a much slower adoption. DIE IE DIE!!!

Microsoft will be a tough nut to crack. Not only do they make Silverlight but they also make DirectX which competes with OpenGL. It's really not in their interests to support this.

I'm hoping that web developers will use the technology anyway and create mindblowing stuff that encourages people to switch away from IE.

[slackpacker]

I hate Safari so much that I have switched to Chrome. Even freaking WebKit beachballs on me. :mad: Oh, why is Chrome so good? :(

The Question is why are you having so many problems with Safari.... Chrome at least for me does not even have a way to organize bookmarks on the mac... If your on windows then I as why? An I see why you are having problems with running software on your rig.

[valanchan]

People have been doing 3d on the web with good results for a decade now. It is nice to finally see a standard emerging.

[colonels1020]

I know most of us here aren't big fans of the Pre, but this is actually the big step that WebOS needed towards being able to have 3D games.

[pcguru83]

Bring it on. Down with Flash! If only we could have agreed on an HTML5 video standard. :o

[whooleytoo]

I bet I would be excited if I knew what this was.

Its a standard means of games and 3D apps in webpages using the hardware acceleration in every Mac/PC. Previously, web based games couldn't, and hence the graphics quality and/or performance suffered.

In the short to medium term, it'll likely mean we'll see more 3D content online.

In the long term, this is arguably another step away from apps you download and run; and towards web-centric computing.

[TheMacPotato]

Hoping it will work on the HD2600. I'm looking forward to those Teapot related games :)

[MorphingDragon]

Javascript :/

[dernhelm]

I don't know what you mean. The differences in speed between Safari and Chrome are virtually nonexistent since the move that Safari has made to 64bit in Snow Leopard.



Agreed. Safari on SL is amazingly fast and stable. Chrome has nothing on it at all.

[pit29]

So, when is this going to turn up in WebKit's nightly builds? I don't feel like compiling it myself...

And I know that it won't make a huge difference for the time being and until there are websites using WebGL, but it'd be nice to have it. Everything is going to be (can't believe I'm the first to say this...) snappier! ;)

[Bubba Satori]

VRML bag of hurt.

[AeronPrometheus]

VRML bag of hurt.

VRML, that takes me back... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuYIrc0uLB8)

[Darkroom]

no better time for flash developers like myself to start learning OpenGL... it was already on my list, but this news pushes it to the top.

[overcast]

Agreed. Safari on SL is amazingly fast and stable. Chrome has nothing on it at all.

The latest nightly builds of Chromium are just as amazingly fast and stable as Safari in SL. Issues with smooth scrolling and flash have all been resolved. It's FAST.

[iBookG4user]

This is very cool, I can't wait for websites to start to utilize it :)

[twilson]

VRML bag of hurt.

Not quite, VRML has no access to any hardware acceleration provided by the platform.

[Rocketman]

Cool. That means it will run on iPod Touch 2009 32/64 as updates and software propagate.

After it is debugged on iPod Touch 2009 32/64, we can expect to see it run through the Apple hardware lines.

So now we can use even more of the graphics hardware for decoding and encoding tasks.

Rocketman

[foniks2020]

As a sometimes Flash developer I am conflicted about the Flash Plugin... There have been so many advances in the Actionscript language in the last few years. Papervision 3D was a huge deal but Pixel Bender is even bigger... if you don't know what I'm talking about - well Pixel Bender lets you create interactive live filters ala Photoshop's filters which means things like live distortions, live painter effects, etc.

So my point is that yes it's great to get an open standard that is working towards this same set of features, including hardware accelerated video and 3D - but it's also a major setback in terms of developing for these features. Developers will have to re-learn and re-develop all of the solutions they've created for Flash... yes some will be ports from Actionscript to Javascript but others will have to be written from the ground up.

Things like animating sound for instance. In Flash/Actionscript you can use code to 'attach' a sound to an object in 3D space and make the sound source itself pan and zoom like any other object (adjusting it's volume and stereo output to make it seem to be coming from the source's location). Use a filter on the sound and you can distort it as well so that the sound seems to 'wiggle' or 'blur' for instance.

For 3D objects, Papervision has support for things like inverse kinematics where you define a range of motion for a piece of a 3D composition so that it can only move relative to it's parent 3D object and only in certain directions... combine this with a good physics engine and you can achieve realistic interactive animations of real world objects and characters. Building support for this into OpenGL is going to be *not easy*. 3D is one thing but compositional, controllable, animated 3D is something entirely different.

Like I said, hopefully the developers working on all these great solutions for Flash will take up the gauntlet and port their work over to Javascript and discover support for the Canvas object and it's access to OpenGL, Audio and Video and then add in support for particle engines, physics engines and all the other nifty tools that Flash developers have access to (some of this is already done actually).

Like I said, I'm conflicted.

[Spades]

Microsoft will be a tough nut to crack. Not only do they make Silverlight but they also make DirectX which competes with OpenGL. It's really not in their interests to support this.

I'm hoping that web developers will use the technology anyway and create mindblowing stuff that encourages people to switch away from IE.

IE's going to be very easy to crack if they don't improve their pace of improvement. Browser progress has hit a break-neck pace in the last year or two. The new features appearing in everything except IE are going to be a big draw to developers. And Ballmer always says it best (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE).

[Rocketman]

As a sometimes Flash developer I am conflicted about the Flash Plugin... There have been so many advances in the Actionscript language in the last few years. Papervision 3D was a huge deal but Pixel Bender is even bigger... if you don't know what I'm talking about - well Pixel Bender lets you create interactive live filters ala Photoshop's filters which means things like live distortions, live painter effects, etc.

So my point is that yes it's great to get an open standard that is working towards this same set of features, including hardware accelerated video and 3D - but it's also a major setback in terms of developing for these features. Developers will have to re-learn and re-develop all of the solutions they've created for Flash... yes some will be ports from Actionscript to Javascript but others will have to be written from the ground up.

Things like animating sound for instance. In Flash/Actionscript you can use code to 'attach' a sound to an object in 3D space and make the sound source itself pan and zoom like any other object (adjusting it's volume and stereo output to make it seem to be coming from the source's location). Use a filter on the sound and you can distort it as well so that the sound seems to 'wiggle' or 'blur' for instance.

For 3D objects, Papervision has support for things like inverse kinematics where you define a range of motion for a piece of a 3D composition so that it can only move relative to it's parent 3D object and only in certain directions... combine this with a good physics engine and you can achieve realistic interactive animations of real world objects and characters. Building support for this into OpenGL is going to be *not easy*. 3D is one thing but compositional, controllable, animated 3D is something entirely different.

Like I said, hopefully the developers working on all these great solutions for Flash will take up the gauntlet and port their work over to Javascript and discover support for the Canvas object and it's access to OpenGL, Audio and Video and then add in support for particle engines, physics engines and all the other nifty tools that Flash developers have access to (some of this is already done actually).

Like I said, I'm conflicted.

Great. Then Adobe should freeware and open source the player for that content. The business model works with Acrobat. Otherwise ****. :D

Rocketman

[metalmaniac]

Die flash die, I hate adobe and its crappy bloody flash so much. I cant wait for it to be replaced. Im sure the misery that flash causes is actually in article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

[jeznav]

This is a really good thing for us developers now that its becoming a standard.

A friend of mine (a flash developer) had tried to show web based game sites such as Blurst (http://blurst.com/) to his colleagues and they refused to install the unity plugin even if it took a couple of seconds. I found a free alternative, Google's O3D api (http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/) (javascript for OpenGL) and was amazed by what it can do. But then again you have to force users to install O3D plugin, which in their mentality is a no no. So we fell back to the most common installed plugin, Flash. My friend said Papervision 3D is now the best way to deliver interactive 3D content without any hassles. But I hated flash in general, the fact that it was a cpu hog especially displaying 3d content. WebGL is going to be my 3d platform for now on for the fact that it will be built in and as a standard.

[DipDog3]

Not impressed. The direction of WebGL is trying to just expose straight OpenGL ES 2.0 calls to JavaScript. JavaScript is still slow in the large scheme of things.

[twoodcc]

i'm all for getting rid of flash

[Stachelsk]

This is going to do some damage to Java if they can get it to go mainstream...

[mdriftmeyer]

Its a standard means of games and 3D apps in webpages using the hardware acceleration in every Mac/PC. Previously, web based games couldn't, and hence the graphics quality and/or performance suffered.

In the short to medium term, it'll likely mean we'll see more 3D content online.

In the long term, this is arguably another step away from apps you download and run; and towards web-centric computing.

Not just games.

[lloyddean]

The functionality, perhaps only partially implemented, appeared in this evenings WebKit nightly build.