

Ask HN: Any cool ideas for an M.S. thesis involving WebGL? - nickthemagicman

Hi all!
I have to write a masters thesis and I want to use WebGL as my main technology.<p>It&#x27;s such a new technology.<p>I was wondering if anyone had any cool ideas for a thesis involving webGL?<p>My first instinct is to write a game but I am but one person.<p>Thanks in advance.
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kennethtilton
You are right, a game would be a tonne of code. Massive encouragement on the
WebGL, btw, 3D made me feel like a kid again. Here is a project I have always
wanted to do: given a wire-frame, simulate the resulting minimum soapfilm
surface algorithmicaly. I believe that maximizes the fun/LOC ratio. You might
look at Javelin, btw, a ClojureScript lib.

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kineticfocus
A good example of the creative flexibility that GL allows:
[http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-
light](http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light)

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nickthemagicman
That game looks really cool. Very original idea.

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iends
Maybe master thesis work differently from where you are...but I think any
thesis should start with defining your research problem, and working from
their to define the tools you will use to investigate the problem.

Picking the tools first is backwards.

In any case, I think compiling C++ to javascript/webgl using emcscripten is an
interesting space, and surely there are a lot of open problems in this area.

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nickthemagicman
I think the tech could play a major part of your research especially if it's
as new as WebGL.

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wesleyac
Off the top of my head:

Make a 3d website.

Make a game (Easier then it sounds)

Make a scripting language that compiles to WebGL.

Good luck!

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DanBC
> Make a 3d website.

It might be interesting to make a 3d interface for HN. Articles with more
activity float in the foreground, and articles with less activity float in the
background.

Or articles with comments from people you score highly float out more?

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kohanz
I've seen some examples of WebGL being applied to medical image visualization,
but my gut tells me this area is still ripe for contributions.

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matthudson
I'm really interested in seeing some of those examples. If you don't remember
the links, can you point me in the general direction?

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kohanz
Here's one example, from a research institute where I studied years ago:
[http://www.imaging.robarts.ca/~dcantor/](http://www.imaging.robarts.ca/~dcantor/)

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theoa
You might also ask this question on the WebGL Developers Google Group:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/webgl-dev-
list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/webgl-dev-list)

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madisonmay
Take a look at acko.net for some inspiration!

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nickthemagicman
Hey thanks yall for the ideas!!

Some good stuff to think about.

