Mozilla, graphics group seek to build 3D Web

Wish you could play Crysis in your Web browser? Two influential organizations are banding together to try to bring accelerated 3D graphics to the Web, a move that eventually could improve online games and other Web applications.

The Web is gradually becoming a better foundation for applications with splashy, sophisticated interfaces, but 3D graphics on the Web remain primitive. Now, though, Mozilla, the group behind the Firefox browser, and Khronos, the consortium that oversees the widely used OpenGL graphics interface technology, are trying to jointly create a standard for accelerated 3D graphics on the Web.

In response to a Mozilla proposal, Khronos established an Accelerated 3D on Web working group to create a royalty-free specification. The goal is to produce a first public version within 12 months, Khronos said in an announcement at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.

Underpinning the proposal is a trend toward significant speed improvements in JavaScript, the programming language used to write many Web-based applications. The proposal involves a mechanism to let JavaScript tap into the OpenGL standard to produce the accelerated graphics.

"Accelerated 3D graphics with the super-fast next-generation JavaScript engines from nearly every Web browser vendor means that we're going to be able to start to see more and more advanced applications written using open Web technologies," said Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard in a blog post Tuesday. "3D is a huge part of that story and we're happy to bring our proposal to the table."

Mozilla plans to release the technology first as an extension to its browser sometime after Firefox 3.5 is released.

Added Mozilla's Vladimir Vukicevic, who's been involved in 3D Web experimentation:

The intense focus on Javascript performance over the past year has seen tremendous improvements across all browsers. Raw language performance is getting to the point where it can keep up with the raw computational requirements of 3D. It will only continue to improve, spurred on by 3D and other use cases. Second, the hardware required for accelerated 3D is becoming pervasive; hardly any desktop computer ships without some form of hardware acceleration, and the latest crop of smartphones almost uniformly have at least OpenGL ES 1.1, if not 2.0 available. Starting this work now ensures that a standard will be ready when Web developers want to take advantage of the capabilities available in hardware.

Finally, people are doing more and more on the Web, and are coming to expect more from the applications that they use. Web applications already have access to features that have traditionally been reserved for desktop apps, including being able to work while offline, storing data locally, multiple choices for 2D graphics, and native audio & video support. Adding 3D to this mix ensures that current Web apps can experiment with new user experiences, while also enabling new classes of Web applications.

There's a long distance between a draft specification, a real standard, and incorporation into enough browsers that Web developers will be able to count on it, so don't expect anything revolutionary immediately. Meanwhile, Adobe is working to build 3D technology into its Flash plug-in for browsers, so other alternatives already popular with online gaming programmers exist.

But as the Internet matures, a number of allies are making gradual progress through HTML 5 and other efforts to build sophisticated technology into open Web standards that don't need a plug-in.

[gggg sssss]

Adobe has been doing this through pdf for years. Still, have never seen an actual website with a 3D pdf yet though.

[Wookiee-1138]

Wouldn't this be under the IEEE, W3C or ISO's jurisdiction?

[Hunnter2k3]

I am 100% behind this.<br />I would love if Google, Apple and MS all got in with this as well. (and all the other numerous web browser companies around the world)<br /><br />One of the experiments on Chrome Experiments, JS Touch, showed quite a bit of promise, it was pretty fast, some slight jaggies and shakes here and there (mainly with the reflection)<br />Wouldn't it be great if Quake Live didn't need that plugin? **<br /><br />Also, don't forget 2D as well.<br />While it is fast, it can still be a little sluggish.<br />Funnily enough, FF2 was the one that suffered badly when i tested, compared to every other browser and most recent versions.<br />768 tiles of 25x25 images in a grid of 32x24 and one image moving over the top of the others.<br />FF2 hit 50-70% CPU for some reason, whereas the others only hit around 2-5% at the most.<br />Strange was it was only after i added 2 additional rows to make an equal group of sub-divided squares (8x8)<br />Not sure how i will deal with FF2 in this... <br /><br />**<br />And speaking of that, most of that download is for the actual game content. <br />This is something that should probably be dealt with alongside 3D support: web-browser installations. <br />I guess you could use cookies, but cookies can and do get cleaned often. A more "permanent" storage would need to be considered. <br />Many people are seriously considering building browsers more like OSes with file permissions and storage handling (Google Native Client, and Microsofts recent document of a future browser to name 2)<br />It would be more secure for one, and much easier to manage web-based files / installations. <br />And persistent processes could run to operate web-based programs.

[gggg sssss]

your last part - Flash and Silverlight already do this very well. Why do we need 48 new versions of teh same thing?

[man_w_balls]

Quake Live, anyone? <br /><br />id Software got the old Quake 3 Arena 3D engine running in Firefox and I.E. <br />actually runs at least as good as the original client-side installed game<br />so why don't these guys send a few emails to Texas or wherever id lives.... <br />they did a good job, originally spearheading the 3D FPS genre, and now it's free on the web too!

[AHassan5]

Adobe Flash is more superior than JavaScript so when it comes to GRAPHICS or 3D, to develop games with Flash will make more sense to developers.<br /><br />Just give it a few years and you'll start seeing more advanced 3D graphics in Flash.

[Stephen_Wilson]

Yeh I agree some what, adobe do seam to be moving in that direction.<br /><br />but flash is a bit of a slow dog of a technology that eats resources / performance just doing 2D.<br /><br />3D puts quite a lot of demand on current hardware, so I dont think flash could cope with much without making it inaccessible to most people.<br /><br />This could all change as technology and flash evolve though, so its possible, but I dont see it in the relatively near future (next 5 years for example.). <br /><br />Ste

[Kosher0]

Why is it that when Mozilla "bands together" it's called "standards" and when Microsoft bands together with Open XML and XAML / Silverlight 3D it's called "non-standard"? Can't mozilla suck it up for a bit and work with an existing technology besides their new "standard". WPF and XAML are well defined.

[t8]

It boils down to not trusting Microsoft. They only do things for their own good and no one else. Mozilla isn't about making billions, but providing a great web experience.

[gggg sssss]

agree 100 5 with t8 <br /> <br />Mozilla is just another bunch of guys trying to make their own millions. Stop wasting preciou senergy and suport what is already the standard. Stop fragmenting teh web. 99 percent of what will be viewed will be viewed on a Windows based computer.

[djScrewhead]

Awesome new idea, VRML totally didn't exist back in 1994!

[sc0op]

thank you sir<br />i post your article here<br />http://sc0op.blogspot.com/2009/03/mozilla-graphics-group-seek-to-build-3d.html

[anonymuos]

WPF and Silverlight do this very well. But an open standard would be better.

[Stephen_Wilson]

Has anyone seen what lateral visions are doing? www.lateralvisions.com. You can see an example of a site they have done for the Linnean Society at http://3d.linnean.org.uk.<br /><br />Its windows only at the mo, but most things start that way!<br /><br />Ste.

[OneAbove]

They should check out the company Garagegames that created InstantAction, they already have acomplished what they're trying to do!

[Stephen_Wilson]

Dont think you have a grasp of what the 3D Web is / should be. InstantAction is about providing 3D software through a browser, in this case casual games. <br /><br />These games are effectively closed worlds that are not connected with the Web in anyway. Just because they can be delivered via a url &#38; rendered in a browser does not make them a website.<br /><br />The 3D Web as I see it is a 3D presentation layer for a website, so you can do all the things you would expect to do with a website (im talking fundamental building blocks) like host it on any server anywhere (not some proprietary server with special technology), then you need to be able to connect these together with a 3D equivalent to a hyperlink. etc . . . <br /><br />I think people &#38; press have seen a glimpse of this when they have seen Virtual Worlds like second life, and jumped to the wrong conclusion 'that this is how a 3D Web is going to be'. Like the casual games platforms such as InstantAction, Virtual Worlds (at least all the ones Ive seen), are also closed isolated worlds, that you rent a little space on. As an analogy, A Virtual World is like if the internet was one big web page, and each site is renting a bit of space on that. With this model, Virtual Worlds will never grow to the scale or potential of the internet.<br /><br />My earlier post is the only example I have seen that does seam to have the right perspective. more info here:<br /><br />http://www.lateralvisions.com/3D_Web_Technology/Features.aspx<br /><br />Ste.

[OneAbove]

I see what you mean, and GarageGames certainly haven't done everything yet, but they have taken major steps to be able to compress a relatively high-def game into a small file and be able to utilize the computer's hardware to run the game well. But you're right, it's far from being what Mozilla would like it to be.