

HW accelerated WebGL fallback using Java - qmaqdk
http://code.google.com/p/jebgl/

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nkassis
On the WebGL mailing list someone mentioned that it's not HW accelerated
except on Mac OSX which makes hard to see this as a fallback for WebGL. There
is also talk of using flash(molehill) as a fallback but that entails some
conversion of things like shaders and sharing the data between the javascript
vm and flash plugin etc.

EDIT: also for IE, it's probably best to just get Chrome Frames.

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daeken
How well does WebGL work in Chrome Frame? I'm gonna be releasing an MVP of a
product centered around WebGL and I've been thinking that GCF might be a good
way to get it working on IE, but haven't yet tested. Would love to hear some
experiences.

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paulirish
It'll work as well in GCF as it will on Chrome in WinXP, which is to say,
really well! There should not be a difference between the two.

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mambodog
I'm amazed that people are taking offense to my mentioning of the "F-word".
Have people already forgotten what Java applets entail? At least with Flash,
getting people to install/update it on demand is not entirely unlikely.

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sunetos
I don't think they're offended by use of the word "flash." The OP is about a
substitute for WebGL, which exposes low level OpenGL commands to Javascript
for hardware accelerated graphics. Flash's API is neither low level nor
hardware accelerated, making it a poor fit for a WebGL fallback.

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mambodog
I imagine that a Flash fallback would be more practical in most situations.

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wladimir
Does flash have OpenGL support these days?

I investigated options for making a 3D web game two years ago, and back then
Flash was still limited to 2D polygons and no depth buffer. There were some
'3D engines' but those did all vertex transforms manually instead of using the
GPU...

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mambodog
Adobe are adding their own "Stage3D" API (aka Molehill) to Flash. I realise
that there are some situations where you want an "OpenGL-alike" like WebGL
(especially if you're porting something already written in OpenGL). However,
for most uses of 3D on the web, an abstraction layer with backends for WebGL
and Flash would be sufficient, and would likely have wider browser support
(it's also easier to get people to drive-by install or update Flash than
Java).

