I’m pretty impressed with performance of experiments like the aquarium. ”>WebGL Aquarium, Human Engines and Gregg Tavares Grabbing the latest Chrome or installing Firefox beta will let you see them, but here are a couple of picks are a cool place to start, and have videos attached if you aren’t near a bleeding-edge browser:
Perhaps more exciting than the Chrome update is the superb Chrome Experiments, which recently added 3D goodness, from creative tools to eye candy to useful tools like an exploration of human anatomy: Read Google’s announcement from Thursday, along with the other enhancements to Chrome: I’ve been testing Firefox 4 beta on Linux and more recently the stable Chrome on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and it’s pretty fantastic. Right now, Chrome or Firefox 4 beta are likely the easiest and most stable way to test WebGL graphics. In recent days, we’ve seen the first stable browser with WebGL enabled by default, Google Chrome. It’s a huge step forward from the clunky, unpredictable, confusing use of Java for browser OpenGL, and unlike that solution, it’s part of the page on which it’s delivered, not part of a plug-in or launched app. If you love the idea of sharing 3D as easily as a webpage, this is big news.
(The superb 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web has a 3D in the browser section, well worth reading.) And you can use JavaScript (among other modern languages) to code 3D creations. And WebGL goes nicely with technologies that are part of HTML5 or modern browser experiments, including the web audio API and browser video support. WebGL isn’t part of HTML5, but HTML5 makes it possible: the Canvas element is what allows WebGL to work its magic. WebGL is a browser-friendly API for OpenGL graphics, and it’s pretty darned close to OpenGL ES 2.0, which in turn will be familiar to anyone doing modern mobile 3D development. Photo ( CC-BY) fdecomiteĪttention, 3D fans: OpenGL in the browser has gradually gotten real.