

WebGL in Internet Explorer - murz
http://blog.virtualglobebook.com/2011/10/webgl-in-internet-explorer.html

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extension
_a work-in-progress that implements WebGL with Canvas_

That's a neat hack but it is absolutely not going to work in any practical
sense. There is already a many orders of magnitude performance gap, and depth
buffering will at least add yet another order of magnitude.

Also, canvas only supports affine texture mapping, as opposed to perspective-
correct 3D mapping. This looks completely ridiculous for many common cases:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perspective_correct_textur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perspective_correct_texture_mapping.jpg)

 _And_ , canvas can't cleanly stitch textured polygons together, so there will
be visible seams everywhere.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but I think one would find this endeavor very
discouraging in the end.

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AshleysBrain
"I'm still confident that Microsoft will add WebGL support to IE" - hmm!
Really?

~~~
azakai
I think Microsoft will.

Yes, Microsoft has opposed it so far. But WebGL is gaining traction and will
soon be enabled in all web browsers but IE. Interesting websites using it are
starting to appear, and that will only accelerate.

So Microsoft will lose out by being the only browser not supporting a useful
technology. People will prefer other browsers. Where Microsoft has nothing to
lose by implementing WebGL.

~~~
windsurfer
Won't it be WebDirectX then? DirectX is a direct competitor to OpenGL.

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azakai
But WebDirectX would benefit Microsoft in no way. It would be a proprietary
extension to the web. It would not let IE run WebGL websites.

Microsoft has recently seen the light when it comes to web standards - the
latest versions of IE are very standards-compliant.

I agree that Microsoft hates OpenGL, and promotes DirectX in any way it can.
But Microsoft also used to hate JavaScript and HTML, and tried to get people
to develop in .NET on the web (Silverlight). But it has shifted to actually
supporting the standards-based web. WebGL is part of that web.

~~~
AshleysBrain
I think if it comes to it, Microsoft will invent WebDirectX under the guise
it's for Windows 8 metro apps, and simply left it on in IE10. 3D on the web is
a niche so it doesn't make their browser uncompetitive. Besides, they can also
claim "you can do the same thing in WebDirectX anyway, just use that" - and
they don't have to be seen supporting OpenGL (who cares if anyone writes
wrappers? they don't have to pretend WebGL is a good idea).

For the record, it's an utterly backward and damaging thing to do to the web,
but they'll do it anyway.

