WebGL Standard To Bring 3D Acceleration To Browsers?

Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec, the Khronos Group has released a few details about their up and coming WebGL 3D acceleration standard. "The general principle behind WebGL is to offer a JavaScript binding to the group's OpenGL ES 2.0 system, allowing code run within the browser to access the graphics hardware directly in the same way as a standalone application can. As the technology would rely solely on JavaScript to do the heavy lifting, no browser plugin would be required — and it would be compatible with any browser which supports the scripting language alongside the HTML 5 'Canvas' element."

Comments

Fast enough for web browsing??!

[formfeed]

There goes the "fast enough for a little browsing and office apps"-computer. Yes, yes, I know, hardware acceleration will render the pages faster - but more and more sites will include 3d junk.

Praise be to Moore and his irrefutable law:

We are doomed to use faster and faster Computers and more and more energy, to read pages that might - content wise- just as well run on gopher.

Honestly?

[Iwanowitch]

I like this. Why not? It can be expected that web browsers use decent security practices, 3D drivers are already doing a fairly good job of providing a stable API via OpenGL, and everything is floating towards web browsers as new deployment platform, also for games and 3D applications. Better have an open 3D standard than a need of all sorts of plugins where everyone comes up with his own half-working solution. This is the indie game developer's wet dream coming true.

Of course, that's the best scenario. How it plays out in practice, we will have to see.

Re:Javascript and direct hardware access.

[ivoras]

It's "direct hardware access" in the same sense as the 2D accelerated DrawRectangle() is "direct hardware access".

Re:For the love of god replace javascript

[Hurricane78]

While JavaScript is not perfect, it is actually a nice little language. It's just that every retard can "program" in it, and then thinks because he wrote a for loop, he is entitled to an opinion about it.

Few people actually know how to program properly in JS. And the only problem is that JS is too forgiving. Just as the rendering engines for (X)HTML and CSS. But that was the original point. And it's not that bad of a point either.

Because simple scripts are way easier than people think. Every person who can play a shooter, puzzle game, or configure some stuff on his computer, can write acceptable scripts. And even total noobs can write bad ones. I think that is a nice thing.

And this is why you can ignore the (non-pro) masses, ranting about JS.

If it were for me, the scripting interface in browsers would have to support multiple high-level languages anyway: Python, Haskell, Java and Ruby would be those that I'd introduce. But others might want Erlang, Ocaml, and maybe even C++. Why not? If the API is clean, the interpreters work as expected, and everything is sandboxed as it should anyway...

Re:I've got an idea!

[Lord Bitman]

HTML+Javascript /is/ the standard GUI framework, that's the point.

If you want something to be pixel-perfect, oh no, it may look a bit off.
If you want something to be useful, HTML has been the way to go for at least a decade.
This, like everything else ever, is not a "let's add this so people can do this" thing, but a "people are doing this, let's make it easier/more standardized by writing down what people are doing and recommending that future browsers be sure to support this"

And of course, like everything else ever, most people aren't going to code to the low-level, but will use higher-level libraries since they care more about functionality than "control".

As for "friggin' JavaScript"... what? When I have problems with writing javascript, it's because of IE6 or Firefox-specific bugs, what's your problem with it? Just don't want to share your source code?