Is WebGL the future?

[mastaBlasta]

So I'm looking at some of these demos for webGL and they look good. They can be slow on weak hardware, and universal browser compatibility is still a LONG way off, but things are moving forward.

There is no doubt that eventually there will be hardware supported, real-time, 3d graphics in all browsers (Adobe Flash is slowly moving in that direction as well). There is no reason not to have fully playable 3d games within a browser. The questions is: is WebGL a good standard to start learning?

Has anyone played with it at all? Advantages? Shortcomings? One drawback for me has been the heavy use of graphic matrices / math, which I'm not a big fan of at all. That stuff needs to be abstracted through some drawing API asap. Also I'm surprised to find out that webGL does not make use of SVGs at all.

But I know little about all this. However I am a web developer by day, so programmer speak is welcome.

 

[krogen]

Learning cutting edge web technology is almost completely useless if you want to write something for the masses. Too many people are using older browsers, like IE8 or IE7. Even "hardcore" geeks that stick with Firefox 3.6 are shooting themselves in the foot. It's old.

IMO, revisit this 2 years from now, or more.

 

[PTNL]

Has anyone played with it at all? Advantages? Shortcomings? One drawback for me has been the heavy use of graphic matrices / math, which I'm not a big fan of at all. That stuff needs to be abstracted through some drawing API asap. Also I'm surprised to find out that webGL does not make use of SVGs at all.

But I know little about all this. However I am a web developer by day, so programmer speak is welcome.

You're not going to escape advanced math concepts when needing to dynamically render lines and polygons on a three-dimensional area. And I would expect an API that wraps up as much of what you're describing to be minimally used due to inherent limitations.

There is a lot going on in the general topic of in-browser 3D rendering, and it's too early to tell which one(s) will be the more dominant force. However... once you learn one implementation, then many of the concepts will carry over to another platform -- it's just syntax and some special case situations that you'd pick up when learning another rendering platform.

On a similar note, this sticky is worth reading.

 

[mastaBlasta]

You're not going to escape advanced math concepts when needing to dynamically render lines and polygons on a three-dimensional area. And I would expect an API that wraps up as much of what you're describing to be minimally used due to inherent limitations.

I guess there is a distinction between a graphics library like webGL, openGL, or DirectX, and an authoring tool built on that library like Maya, 3dsMax and so forth.

I'll confess I have no interest in learning how to code using the graphics API directly. I think most artists and designers don't either. So I guess the make it or break it for any web graphics technology will be how soon can someone get an easy to use and expressive authoring tool. There are some plug-ins already for Maya->WebGL

You can never underestimate ease of use. It's what's keeping Adobe Flash still in business. Because people don't want to be bothered with a million javascript plug-ins.

And the purpose of all this btw is games. Games are the only useful result i can think of for having 3d graphics in a browser.

 

[PTNL]

I guess there is a distinction between a graphics library like webGL, openGL, or DirectX, and an authoring tool built on that library like Maya, 3dsMax and so forth.

I'll confess I have no interest in learning how to code using the graphics API directly. I think most artists and designers don't either. So I guess the make it or break it for any web graphics technology will be how soon can someone get an easy to use and expressive authoring tool. There are some plug-ins already for Maya->WebGL

You can never underestimate ease of use. It's what's keeping Adobe Flash still in business. Because people don't want to be bothered with a million javascript plug-ins.

And the purpose of all this btw is games. Games are the only useful result i can think of for having 3d graphics in a browser.

There is a strong distinction between a using a rendering tool for designers and working with a 3D engine API.

I suggest giving it a shot, but starting small. Work through some "hello world"-like applications and samples, and see what you can figure out. If anything, the exercise might make you a better designer through a deeper understanding of how things work.

 

[InternationalHat]

Maybe. It has a lot of security problems and until IE and mobile browsers support it, it won't really be very useful. Web workers and things like nodejs are more immediately impactful.

 

[Kevin5255]

So I'm looking at some of these demos for webGL and they look good. They can be slow on weak hardware, and universal browser compatibility is still a LONG way off, but things are moving forward.

There is no doubt that eventually there will be hardware supported, real-time, 3d graphics in all browsers (Adobe Flash is slowly moving in that direction as well). There is no reason not to have fully playable 3d games within a browser. The questions is: is WebGL a good standard to start learning?

Has anyone played with it at all? Advantages? Shortcomings? One drawback for me has been the heavy use of graphic matrices / math, which I'm not a big fan of at all. That stuff needs to be abstracted through some drawing API asap. Also I'm surprised to find out that webGL does not make use of SVGs at all.

But I know little about all this. However I am a web developer by day, so programmer speak is welcome.

Adobe announced not long ago that they are abandoning Flash. I think there very much IS a doubt whether we will move towards hardware supported 3d graphics in all browsers.