The Khronos Group—the same industry consortium that manages the development of standards like the OpenGL 3D platform—has announced it is targeting the first half of 2010 for its first release of WebGL, a hardware-accelerated 3D platform for Web browsers based on OpenGL ES 2.0. Originally announced at the Game Developers Conference back in March 2009, the idea is to leverage recent developments in browser technology—like substantially accelerated JavaScript engines and the HTML 5 Canvas element—to bring real 3D graphics to Web browsers…without using a browser plug-in.
The WebGL working group is working on a royalty-free standard that will bind the Open GL ES 2.0 standard to JavaScript, enabling developers to create 3D graphics within a browser on any platform that supports the OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics standards. The result could be a new breed of interactive and visually compelling Web applications that don’t require proprietary technology like Adobe Flash; in theory, WebGL could even open up the possibility of lightweight gateways into OpenGL-based virtual worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft, without requiring plug-ins or client software. The WebGL working group is aiming at a platform- and browser-agnostic standard; Khronos specifically indicated the group is working on on portable, secure shader programs.
Members of the Khronos Group include Nvidia, AMD, Google, Ericsson, Mozilla, and Opera.
