

Show HN: WebGL Enabler for iOS - daeken
http://demoseen.com/webglenabler/#

======
hartror
So it immediately raises the question why isn't this released?

The reasons I can think of are:

* Performance isn't what they want yet.

* Implementation isn't what they want yet.

* There are security issues they still need to fix.

OR putting on my tin foil hat for a second:

* Apple sees WebGL as a possible threat to their app revenues as a soild WebGL implementation could allow developers to avoid entering their app market place and instead charge users directly. It would also allow developers to deploy to other platforms with the same code base.

Obviously the last point is a bit nutty but one can't help but wonder if it is
a consideration.

~~~
cccbbb
His program essentially leaks beta software for profit.

~~~
daeken
Agreed. I don't know what I'd do without the $20.60 I've made off of this
(before Paypal fees)...

~~~
ktizo
Would be really interesting to see how much you make off this with your
donation model. I wonder how much it would affect income if you used someone
other than paypal, or had several donate options.

Anyways, good on you for doing this.

~~~
daeken
I'm expecting that it's probably not going to go much above where it is right
now (which is still twice as much as I figured it'd bring in); despite quite a
few downloads from HN, no one has paid for it. That said, I'm sure I could
increase paid conversions with some work, but I honestly don't care enough to
do so. I built this so that I could build neat demos on my iPad, and there's
no way I'll recoup the cost of 5 or so hours of dev time I spent on this. I'm
just glad that it's working well for people.

------
daeken
I submitted this a couple days ago at a pretty bad time (middle of the US
night) and it died pretty quickly. I figured I'd wait until v0.0.2 to throw it
back up here, and that's now out. It seems to be working quite nicely on all
iOS 4.2+ devices, though some of the older iPhones have performance issues it
seems. Hope you guys enjoy this.

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DHowett
Free, open-source, and _ten months old._

<https://github.com/rpetrich/WebGLEnabler>

~~~
daeken
I saw that after my first release, but 1) this is free-ish (you can choose to
pay whatever amount you want) and open source (
<https://github.com/daeken/WebGLEnabler> ) as well, 2) mine works at the
WebView level rather than Safari, and includes a toggle in settings.

That said, I would've used a different name had I known about that before I
released.

Edit: Oh, I'm wrong. I could've sworn that his was just for Safari, but I just
saw in the source that I'm wrong. He just works at the Web _Frame_ level
rather than Web _View_.

~~~
DHowett
Ouch, sorry for not paying better attention; I didn't notice the source to
yours. Both approaches appear equally valid and yours appears to be rather
more fleshed-out (what with preferences).

I didn't mean to denigrate your project, as well: I apologize if it seemed
that way!

I quite enjoy seeing people use Theos/Logos as well. Definitely worth sinking
my time into working on them!

~~~
daeken
No worries. And seriously great work with Theos/Logos; I haven't touched iOS
stuff since working on the unlock for the original iPhone, and I still managed
to whip all of this up in ~5 hours.

------
infinitivium
This is badass! But, once again something Apple should have already given
developers.

Thanks for putting this together, hopefully it spurs them along.

~~~
cccbbb
It's not like Apple forgot about this feature. It just isn't ready which is
why it's not enabled. It will be released when it's ready.

~~~
veb
In the mean time you can use OPs link.

------
DanielRibeiro
Former discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4029365>

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satu
WebGL Enabler won't work well with all existing WebGL demos, but there's a
cache of them to tryout at <http://www.webgl.com> and
<http://www.chromeexperiments.com>

~~~
daeken
Two things to note about testing existing demos/games: 1) It supports 0 vertex
shader texture units, which breaks some of the more interesting demos (I think
this is an implementation thing, rather than a hardware limitation, at least
on the higher end devices; the iPad 3 _has_ to support this stuff), 2) Most
demos and games use onmousedown/move/up rather than ontouch*, which causes
them to break. I'm trying to come up with a decent solution to run these
existing demos.

------
mappu
I know jailbreaking doesn't immediately imply piracy, but this is another
example in the fine tradition of pirates getting the better product. The
recent Quasar window manager for iOS is another example.

------
wavephorm
Like how Apple has sabotaged the use of HTML5 Audio, I think it is unlikely
they will enable WebGL. It provides developers an open platform for developing
games, which conflicts with Apple's closed system agenda.

~~~
st3fan
How have they sabotaged HTML Audio?

~~~
huskyr
The biggest problem is definitely not the lack of OGG support but the
disabling of autoplay on iOS: [http://weblogs.vpro.nl/digitaal/2011/11/04/why-
html5-audiovi...](http://weblogs.vpro.nl/digitaal/2011/11/04/why-
html5-audiovideo-on-ios-is-virtually-unusable/)

~~~
Xuzz
Disabling autoplay on iOS is not unreasonable. I don't want autoplay anywhere,
but I really would not expect opening a web page on my phone to start blaring
random audio out the speakers. I wouldn't call that "sabotage", I'd call that
"someone actually cares about what users expect". (That's leaving alone data
concerns, especially with limited and expensive 3G data plans.)

~~~
nkassis
They could always allow you to mute sites by default. You see to be overly
optimistic that they are doing it for the users good.

~~~
Xuzz
How is "mute by default" different from "no autoplay" except that when users
actually hit play, it would just start somewhere in the middle? (That sounds
like an even worse user experience.)

~~~
gosub
It would be "no autoplay by default" instead of "mute by default".

the difference is that in the "no autoplay ever" case I would be not able to
enable it if I wanted. "No autoplay by default" is the reasonable initial
setting, while still giving users a choice.

------
cccbbb
You're encouraging people to pay for this internal setting toggle, that Apple
didn't default to 'On' for a reason (not being finished)? Where is the value
in this? You are basically charging for Apples incomplete software.

~~~
daeken
The value is that people want to use WebGL now, as seen by the almost 1000
people who have downloaded the software over the last few days. However, I
have no idea how one can put a price on something of this sort, which is why
you could pay $0 or $500 for it if you want. I tend to believe that saving
people from a couple of hours of tinkering (writing the same tweak I have,
basically) is worth at least $1, but people have thrown in anywhere from $0.10
to $5.

~~~
cccbbb
But they're not "using" WebGL other than seeing a demo of it. There's
absolutely no interaction. I bet at least half of your downloads expect
they'll magically be able to have fully compatible WebGL games. Now that would
be software worth paying for, provided it wasn't a settings toggle.

~~~
daeken
Err, what? You do have full compatibility with WebGL with this. Any failings
there are on the part of games are due to a lack of proper event handling
(specifically, not using ontouch* events).

And again, "worth paying for" is up to the customers. I very much encourage
people to download it and then pay for it if they see value in it. So far
people have seen value in it.

~~~
cccbbb
Device data (touches, accelerometer, etc) are exactly what I meant by
compatibility. Again, back to my point of it not being finished. I see that it
wasn't your fault, but this is misleading and shady.

~~~
daeken
I don't think you understand. All of these things are there. In addition,
these have nothing to do with WebGL. You're painting this to be something that
it's very much not.

My tweak has been confirmed to work by everyone who has tried it, and it works
quite nicely. You're saying that I'm being "misleading and shady", when in
reality the full functionality is there.

~~~
cccbbb
Oh, I do understand. Congrats on practically leaking a incomplete beta and
making money off of it.

~~~
satu
I actually like that he can make money off of this. It shows that there is a
market for WebGL enablement on the iphone. It cracks the whip above Apple's
head.

