Firefox gets an early taste of 3D Web standard

A nascent technology called WebGL for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web is getting a lot closer to reality.

Last week, programmers began building WebGL into Firefox's nightly builds, the developer versions used to test the latest updates to the open-source browser. Also this month, programmers began building WebGL into WebKit, the project that's used in both Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.

Wolfire Games picked up on the WebKit move and offered a video of WebGL in action.

Overall, the moves stand to accelerate the pace of WebGL development by making it easier to try out. But the technology still has a ways to go before people will be able to play Web-based versions of a 3D software such as first-person shooter video games or Google Earth.

"All of these implementations are going to have some interoperability issues for the next little while, as the spec is still in flux and we're tracking it at different rates, but will hopefully start to stabilize over the next few months," said Vladimir Vukicevic in a blog post.

WebGL is one of a several efforts under way to make Web browsers into a more powerful computing platform, increasingly capable of rivaling what software running natively on a computer can do. Even the company with the most to lose from that direction--Microsoft--is embracing it with a Web-based version of Office.

The WebGL plan emerged in March from Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the venerable OpenGL standard to let software tap into a computer's hardware-based graphics power . WebGL's roots lie with an earlier Mozilla project called Canvas 3D, a cousin of the present two-dimensional Canvas technology for drawing graphics in Web pages.

Although Google is a WebGL supporter, it's also developing a higher-level 3D graphics technology called O3D for browsers. Google is working on building O3D into Chrome, but the fruits of that labor aren't yet available.

WebGL has a ways to go, as well, but developers eager to give it a whirl should probably start thinking seriously about it.

"The WebGL working group is targeting the first half of 2010 for release of the standard, but implementations will show up before that," said WebGL programmer Mark Steele in August.

Those wanting to try it not only have to download the Firefox nightly build, but also have to specifically enable WebGL through the Firefox "about:config" mechanism. Vukicevic has instructions on his blog.

[forever4now]

It's great to see all the rapid advancements, in the browser space, these days.

I've already been playing with some of the built in HTML5 functionality & it will be nice, to also play with WebGL.

Perhaps there should be the equivalent of an Acid3 test, for HTML5 & WebGL. That way, all the browser vendors can tune their implementations to match.

[davidwarren]

maybe they will call it acid4.........

[Hunnter2k3]

Really glad to see these efforts to make a 3D standard.
With things like Quake Live, Runescape and so on, it would be stupid not to come up with some standard so it won't require so many plugins to manage.

3D graphics on the web will happen sooner or later.
There has been 1 attempt previously, but it failed to take off because the web "wasn't as big", now is as good a time as any.

[Len Bullard]

The web was big enough. It wasn't fast enough: the frame rate of P60s and P90s and 14.4 and 28k modems were just too slow to do anything compelling, so we resorted to CDs. BZZZT!

Now it is both but the problem remains that interactive 3D is still hard to build for anything compelling. What these new initiatives will need will be even higher level building frameworks. We'll see how that goes.

At least it is no longer a question of "if Web3D" but when. It's been a grand dream but a long trek.

[unknown unknown]

I guess we didn't get enough of this with VRML. Hopefully they do something interesting with it this time.

[dougbugl]

BFD, the browser is over rated and won't last. ;-)

[luke_marsh]

The Question is if the web is fast enough today. I would recommend this processes of development try not to rush to market but take the time to set the standard well ready for when all hardware is better equipped connection for when connection speeds improve. The real benefit of working in the web as opposed to a Propitiatory built app would be the way data and compute centres could be made use of something the web isn't that powerful with yet but this is the time for great experimentation in that area and the VRML day mostly over a phone line with low powered PC's was not.

[Wayne_M]

Actually, if WebGL uses the same technology as online role playing games, the web will be more than fast enough. These games use mature technology and rely on client-side processing instead of network bandwidth. The basic image is downloaded and not much larger than typical GIF/JPG/BMP files. It is the client-side processor that does all the work to move, rotate, and re-render the initial image. I would guess that the actual WebGL image uses an order of magnitude less network bandwidth than the You Tube videos of it in this article.

[ducttape36]

doesnt look much better than an animated gif. but im hoping they find a better way to implement it rather than just rotating 3d models.

[crazykillller]

w0000t I really think since the last 2 years, the Web Browser revolution has started.[Too bad Netscape didn't live to see the day :(]

[dmc081]

u can neva beat firefox with any other browser

[01Phyxius]

except FF 3.5 doesn't pass the acid3 test.
:(
(I still use it though)

[mistasandman]

Internet Explorer 8 is faster and safer. Firefox crashes all the time.