WebGL

WebGL stands for Web Graphics Library (English for web graphics library ) and is a constituent of web browsers that enables hardware-accelerated 3D graphics right in the browser - can be displayed - without any additional extensions.

Background and History

WebGL is a 3D graphics programming interface for Web browsers based on OpenGL ES ( version 2.0) in conjunction with the JavaScript programming language, which is developed by the Khronos Group and Mozilla as a royalty-free standard. Work on the project began in April 2009. In May 2010 it was announced that the company Google will also support the standard.

First implementations of WebGL are implemented in WebKit and Gecko rendering engines, which, however, are in a very early experimental stage. Moreover, the IT company AMD, Ericsson, Nvidia and Opera have participated in the development of the project since August 2009.

On 3 March 2011 the first version of the WebGL specification at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was released. In March 2011, WebGL was supported by Google's Chrome browser and Mozilla's Firefox, and otherwise enabled by default in browser prerelease versions of Safari and Opera.

In November 2011, introduced by Google in March 2011 Project Angle was (which is advertised is for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine) for OpenGL ES version 2.0 certified, which makes it possible to cross-platform applications with WebGL support, among others, for the three most popular operating system platforms - Windows, Mac and Linux - to develop.

Content creation

Graphic designers can create content for WebGL with software tools such as Blender or Maya without programming. The 3D scenes are then exported to WebGL. This is for example possible with Inka3D, a WebGL exporter for Maya.

Already exists a comprehensive, implemented in the JavaScript programming language, free 3D environment name Three.js for developers.