
There's a WebGL talk at WWDC 2014 - daredevildave
http://blog.playcanvas.com/apple-embraces-webgl/
======
0x0
Wild speculation: iOS 8 will bring an out-of-process, heavily sandboxed
webview, which was the missing piece for enabling webgl for everyone. The
greatly increased attack surface (with almost direct gpu access via shaders
etc) was too risky to host in in-process web views - explains why webgl was
only enabled for iAds (since those would be vetted by a review team)

~~~
shadowmint
> The greatly increased attack surface (with almost direct gpu access via
> shaders etc) was too risky to host in in-process web views

What really?

Were they seriously even pretending to use that excuse?

Everyone I've ever talked to was 100% certain it was simply because they
didn't want anyone by-passing the app store for games and other immersive
content they would then have no control over.

I'm not denying that webgl is an attack surface; it totally is; but surely
it's a bit rich to say that the webgl implementation in webkit has been
switched off for the last _3 years_ because of security concerns.

If _that_ was the only reason to not having feature parity with other OS's,
they'd have some something about it.. oh, you know. 2-3 years ago.

~~~
rsynnott
> Everyone I've ever talked to was 100% certain it was simply because they
> didn't want anyone by-passing the app store for games and other immersive
> content they would then have no control over.

This never made sense to me as an explanation, if only because for a very long
time iOS had a far more sophisticated browser than Android; Android only
really reached feature parity with Chrome for Android, and for years iOS was a
much better platform for webapps. If they were so protective of the app store,
they would hardly have put so much effort into best-in-class modern web
support; offline web apps are in principle as much a threat to the app store
as webgl stuff.

~~~
Touche
While true, to be fair they've hardly put much effort into the browser since
iOS 3 or 4. Still far behind on many important web standards. Still do
releases like once a year. Haven't improve homescreen webapps at all (every
time you click the icon it starts the app from-scratch, even if it was already
open).

~~~
rsynnott
> While true, to be fair they've hardly put much effort into the browser since
> iOS 3 or 4. Still far behind on many important web standards.

Well, it's much, much faster, and they've added plenty of stuff since IOS4
(web sockets, for instance, which it had a fair while before Chrome for
Android).

------
judah
The title is misleading. It should read, "There's a WebGL talk at WWDC 2014."

This blogger spotted a talk at WWDC 2014 on WebGL. He speculates this means
there's a forthcoming release of Safari with WebGL enabled by default, thus
predicting Apple is embracing WebGL.

But we don't actually know that.

~~~
dang
Thank you. We changed it.

The HN guidelines call for changing titles when they're linkbait or
misleading.

------
bhouston
This sounds like convincing to me, well somewhere around 75% convincing. :)

This will signal the true start of the WebGL era, because the lack of WebGL on
iOS has been a real buzz kill for commercial adoption of WebGL outside of pure
enthusiastic circles -- I know this first hand unfortunately in trying to do
B2B deals with [http://Clara.io's](http://Clara.io's) interactive embed
technology -- it is nearly impossible to sell to major clients once they
realize that it doesn't work on iOS:

[http://exocortex.github.io/audi/](http://exocortex.github.io/audi/) \- Car

[http://exocortex.github.io/klaas/](http://exocortex.github.io/klaas/) \-
House

~~~
wildpeaks
Perhaps you could use Ejecta when they ask for iOS support ? Sure they'd still
be disappointed that it doesn't run directly in Safari Mobile, but
alternatives like Unity or AIR don't run in it either.

Although you probably don't need it anymore now that you have the remote
rendering embeds :)

------
AshleysBrain
If Safari gets WebGL, combined with the new FTL JIT it could end up being
pretty darn awesome for gaming.

~~~
tantalor
Safari already has WebGL behind a flag as the article notes, but most users do
not enable it.

~~~
jonknee
I think they meant for mobile.

------
VoxPelli
And for those already wanting to experiment with WebGL on iOS there's always
[http://impactjs.com/ejecta](http://impactjs.com/ejecta) – which will likely
still be preferable for packaged games even if embedded webviews will start
supporting WebGL as it will still have less overhead than the webview.

------
bernatfp
I also wonder when is Apple going to update Safari with WebRTC support. It's
something many users could really benefit from.

~~~
rsynnott
WebRTC's still in draft and expected to change a fair bit; Apple rarely
implements draft standards unless they're draft standards it made (Canvas etc)

------
stcredzero
I hope this allows Javascript games to completely displace Flash -- without
becoming as big an attack surface as Flash and Java became.

Right now implementing an HTML5 or JavaScript multiplayer game is still a
considerable exercise in navigating browser differences.

------
ant_sz
I found in current version of Safari, the rendering of webGL still have some
issues on Retina display, It also cost too much energy.

So I will be satisfied even if Apple can only solve the most of these problems
on desktop platform and make it on by default.

------
cconroy
I really hope WebGl+javascript kills CSS and html and all the other web stuff
and we get back to desktop rich applications.

And a URL can map to some state/object too. Google can then think about
searching for things richer than just textual.

~~~
tantalor
Not sure if you are trolling...

HTML and WebGL are mostly orthogonal. For example, you do not want to render
text or form controls in WebGL.

We can improve HTML rendering with GPU-accelerated compositing, but that's
mostly behind the scenes.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't think they're trolling - I have some similar feelings about this too.
I think the main point is that outside of document-centric websites (say,
Wikipedia), rich webapps are basically grossly abusing HTML to wrangle it into
a semi-sane (but not really sane) way to render desktop-style UIs.

Think GMail, think Pandora - neither of which parses logically as a document,
but are made from HTML: horribly hacky, horribly complex HTML at that.

It would seem to me that we're making HTML do something it was never meant to
do, and that there are many applications on the web today that really don't
need that stack at all, and really just need code and a renderer (like, say, a
desktop OS).

Of course, this is a double edged sword. Simply tossing a renderer to devs is
just going to invite a whole slew of confusing, non-standard UIs. Though, that
said, if you look at GMail et al, we're already there.

------
Demiurge
Does this mean jailbreaking will become a lot easier?

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CmonDev
I hope their screening will remain strict. I foresee a whole wave of...
"quality titles" scripted in JS.

~~~
untog
What screening? WebGL is used on... the web. That's the beauty of it.

~~~
mastazi
I think CmonDev refers to apps made with PhoneGap, Cordova etc., and I agree
that using this type of solutions for 3D games might not be the best choice in
order to offer a good user experience.

------
0ptical
Ah the heady days of spring and summer speculations.

