OpenGL will not only be available straight from your browser, you won't even need GL drivers for it to work.

It was a great idea back in early 90s when VRML was invented. You couldn't go to any conference without seeing 3D worlds running in browser and whatnot.

Yet here we are, 15 years later, and we have flash.

It's not the technology - it's accessibility, and that means ubiquity. Maybe in 5 years it will be viable.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
It was a great idea back in early 90s when VRML was invented. You couldn't go to any conference without seeing 3D worlds running in browser and whatnot.

Yet here we are, 15 years later, and we have flash.

It's not the technology - it's accessibility, and that means ubiquity. Maybe in 5 years it will be viable.

Ah, but 15 years ago, we did not have google.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
It was a great idea back in early 90s when VRML was invented. You couldn't go to any conference without seeing 3D worlds running in browser and whatnot.

Yet here we are, 15 years later, and we have flash.

It's not the technology - it's accessibility, and that means ubiquity. Maybe in 5 years it will be viable.

There are a few very important differences now, though. The first is that &#106avascript seems to have a great deal of momentum right now, and so technologies tied to &#106avascript seem to actually be picked up by browsers. It looks to me like WebGL will shortly have fairly standard browser support, which is grounds for optimism.<br><br>Also, unlike the 90s, most people now have the hardware support to actually run something interesting in WebGL given that the browser support comes along, rather than "you should get this new proprietary plug-in that supports up to 15% of VRML's feature set and can display a ten polygon flat shaded logo in a 200x200 box but will never be updated again."

Quote: Original post by cowsarenotevil

There are a few very important differences now, though. The first is that &#106avascript seems to have a great deal of momentum right now, and so technologies tied to &#106avascript seem to actually be picked up by browsers. It looks to me like WebGL will shortly have fairly standard browser support, which is grounds for optimism.<!--QUOTE--></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!--/QUOTE--><!--ENDQUOTE--><br><br>It's not about that.<br><br>The Big Names are currently struggling to kill Flash, while &#111;ne and &#111;nly &#111;ne of them becomes the next Adobe. Between canvas, video tag and, very far down the road, WebGL, what they are trying to figure out how to claim the dynamic html market of mobile web. Apple is currently ahead and has laid a lot of strategic claims in that regard.<br><br>Resurgence of &#106avascript was also a side-effect of Google making claim for MS Office (chrome, v8), and Apple making claim for IE (webkit). Those are the underlying strategic elements, JS was just means to an end.<br><br>But as far as 3D goes, WebGL isn't really relevant. In 15 years, there has not been a killer app for 3D &#111;n the web. Compared to youtube + Flash.<br><br>If there were a case for 3D, then Java (even ME) and applets would have been a viable alternative for almost a decade now. And in recent iterations, Flash does a somewhat decent job at doing basic 3D, but there still hasn't been a use case.<br><br>Use case here means something like youtube, not Farmville. Games and such content serve &#111;n company. YouTube however is a strategic asset that brings in entire media industry (billions upon billions in strategic value).