

Learning WebGL - alexkon
http://learningwebgl.com/

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kaib
WebGL is pretty close to prime time as of FF 4 and upcoming webkit based
browsers. We have been developing in production mode for it in over 4 months
now and are pretty satisfied with the results. AFAIK we have only encountered
one crash bug, possibly an ATI driver issue, which was easy to work around
once diagnosed. Performance isn't as fast as native but close enough for most
applications that aren't bleeding edge (read AAA games).

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modeless
If you're writing any WebGL code, definitely check out the WebGL Inspector:

<http://benvanik.github.com/WebGL-Inspector/>

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lazyjeff
Does anyone know which browsers have hardware graphics acceleration for WebGL?
Does it work on iPhone/Android, or only desktop browsers?

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gpjt
The current Chrome and Firefox betas both have hardware acceleration for the
desktop versions.

WebGL is based on OpenGL ES, the version used by devices like the iPhone,
rather than on the full "desktop" OpenGL -- this was apparently a deliberate
choice made to make sure that it would work on mobile devices. And Apple are
part of the standards group, so presumably it _will_ work on the iPhone at
some point.

However -- there are no mobile versions easily available right now.

* You can get a version of Fennec (Firefox mobile) for Android that runs it, but I believe you'd have to build it yourself from source with appropriate flags. Here's a video, anyway: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmiOO71yHQ8> * A while back, an over-the-air firmware upgrade for the Nokia N900 (Maemo smartphone) did activate WebGL, but the version in question is now out-of-date and most current demos won't work with it. Video here: <http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p=2340>

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exDM69
Yep, WebGL runs on the Nokia N900 browser out of the box. However, I cannot
run a whole lot of the WebGL demos out there, others run out of video memory
(textures, I suppose) while others just don't work and don't give any error
messages. Some simple tests I've written myself do work.

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gpjt
The thing is, they changed the spec after the PR 1.2 Nokia update that enabled
WebGL was released in June or July. In August WebGLFloatArray was renamed to
Float32Array because the low-level typed array specification was broken out of
WebGL and turned into a separate proposed standard, for example.

So any demos you can run might be old ones that wouldn't run in the current
beta browsers!

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nickpinkston
Kronos told me at SigGraph that we'd see something fully finalized in Q1 - any
one know if this is true or not?

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gpjt
I follow the public list where a subset of the spec-writing stuff is
discussed, and it sounds likely that the spec will be done before the end of
March, yes. There was quite a heavy hint dropped at the start of December:
<http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p=2811>

Browser support is also likely soon, perhaps even before then -- Chrome 9 and
Firefox 4 are almost certain to have WebGL switched on by default (it's on in
the current betas, though I guess there's always the chance of a last-minute
disaster). And I've heard rumours of February release dates for both.

