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DirectX 11 Coming To Browser Games

Posted by Soulskill on from the see-the-stubble-on-your-stick-figure's-chin dept.

arcticstoat writes "Forget Farmville, Flash puzzlers and 8-bit home computer emulators. The next generation of browser games will be able to take advantage of DirectX 11 effects, not to mention multi-core processing and both Havok and PhysX physics effects. A new browser plug-in called WebVision will be available for Trinergy's new game engine, Vision Engine 8. This will enable game developers to port all the advanced effects from the game engine over to all the common browsers. Of course, any budding 3D-browser-game dev will face the problem that not every PC has a decent graphics card that can handle advanced graphics effects. Not only that, but limited bandwidth will also limit what effects a developer can realistically implement into a browser game. Nevertheless, this is an interesting development that could result in some tight 3D programming, as well as some much more interesting browser games."

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Another pointless plugin? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why bother when we have WebGL (the 3D canvas API) that doesn't require any plugins at all?

    Really, the whole browser plugin idea is a grand, failed experiment. Instead of a fecund atmosphere of competing web extensions, the plugin mechanism has just resulted in one or two players achieving dominance and vendor lock-in.

    Browsers themselves implementing experimental, then standardized functionality is a much more viable approach. It's given us all the real improvements to the web to date.

    How long will it be until we can kill the plugin mechanism entirely?

    1. Re:Another pointless plugin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What features in D3D doesn't OpenGL support? OpenGL has a history of supporting MORE features than D3D via vendor extensions. And I doubt OpenGL is not suited to fast game-style graphics rendering, because GAMES ON OSes OTHER THAN WINDOWS EXIST. See Halo on Mac, Everything Blizzard on the Mac, Quake 4, etc.

  2. Re:Yeah sure... by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can you imagine HTML+CSS+SVG running as a local C++ program? Beauty and power in one sleek package. If anyone knows more about things like this, let me know.

    Yeah, C++ programs that run on your machine and render HTML+CSS (and some even SVG) exist. They're called Web Browsers.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  3. Re:What's the alternative? by am+2k · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmm you'd probably have to put it into some kind of sandbox that doesn't allow stuff like local file access...

    But still, you'd need support for 3D graphics. If only such a thing would exist...

    Too bad.