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Original post by irreversible Antheus - I'm not sure I can understand the source of your reservation. You, of all people, should be able to appreciate the importance of innovation. And on a relative scale, this is innovative. Not innovative in a look-we-made-a-new-thing kind of way, but in a look-we-made-it-work kind of way.

There is absolutely no innovation here. None. Nada. There is not a single concept present here that would not have been widely available for the past 20 or more years. Not a single one.

If anything, this is a sign of death of innovation in software industry. No longer driven by any kind of technical achievements, it is not a bureaucratic process of private companies fighting over proprietary implementations of pseudo standards. That, by all counts, is death of innovation.

And the worst of all - once this becomes viable in 3 years or so, it will allow utilization of about 2% of average GPU. The rest will be lost to overhead and other abstractions.

This is akin to going from F1 racing to bumper cars. Fun, no? You can race, and you can bump each other. And since you have a helmet and knee pads and fire proof suit and since you are safely fastened, it's perfectly safe fun for whole family. Isn't innovation great? Don't you feel lucky to be able to experience F1 racing?

im with Antheus but my major gripe is that none of these tech demos increase productivity.

Are you to go now and and write a software renderer in HTML5 / &#106avascript, Flash or Silverlight? If i want to make a browser game I would use Unity3D. Do you expect ID to re-release QuakeLive in &#106avascript so you don't have to download their custom plugin?<br><br>Converting C to Java and then Java to &#106avascript for the purposes of running Quake 2 in a browser is rediculous, i don't know how the web ever became so fudged.<br><br>These paradigms are crap. We need to go back the drawing board.

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Original post by Antheus in 3 years or so, it will allow utilization of about 2% of average GPU

My whole point is that the GPU is for the taking for the browser-based software. The bandwidth isn't, because it's far more limited. I don't see a reason to repeat myself regarding my last post.

Generally speaking, I disagree with you. This is a step in the process of innovative achievement and as such it is vital. There are six billion people in the world and creative innovation is in no way under fire here. Streamlining the process through which this is achieved is a different story.

This is cool!

On an off-topic, any examples of VRML or Intel mts or similar in HTML5?

Regards,
Ulhas

I think this is not about the technology involved but about the idea of games being played/served/executed online.

It's like saying the MAME emulator is stupid because it's made in c/asm and runs games that are 20 years old. That's not the point.

I don't get what's so special about 3D games in the browser. Why would we need this, except for better community implementations like in Quake Live? If there wasn't the fine community system in Quake Live, do you think people would still prefer it over Q3? And even with the community system people like Q3 still more, because it's easier to set up servers and mods.
Even if someone manages to write a 3D engine in HTML only, why bother using it when you can have the same things without browsers, where the stage of development isn't in the stone age?

But, it's definitely fun to play a few rounds at work :D haha. Thanks for the links.

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Original post by YoYoFreakCJ I don't get what's so special about 3D games in the browser.

We don't, as such. But there is a considerable use for fast raster blits - something that was one of the very first techniques for "fast" graphics in any OS.

There are two fundamental mechanisms - fast triangle rasterization (mostly for 3D, but useful for some 2D, basis of all GPUs) and blitting (basically fast rendering of sprite, perhaps with alpha). Optionally, a per pixel transform for modifying images (think shader).

These two (or three) techniques are the core of anything graphically intensive and all the graphics hardware today is capable of performing it incredibly efficiently. In browser, they go completely unused. The $500 GPU burning 200W in today's machine is no better for the task than Tseng4000 VGA card was 20 years ago.

Anything else can be built on top of those operations, obviously the more the better, but this would allow for smooth graphics rendering (maps, images, photo editing, overlay/composite effects, blending, anti-aliasing when compositing elements, fast rendering of charts and other indicators) as well as some use in display of 3D (CAD, CAE, physics simulations, medical imaging).

It is incredibly frustrating to be stuck with Java (cross platform, for better or worse) and its abysmal libraries for this task (or Flash, which only solves a niche of problems, or server-side rendering) for these tasks that should have been available for years.

But agreed that these applications are not completely consumer market oriented, even though they would be put to good use in certain segments (live-preview of products composited on-the-fly based on purchase parameters - think cars, houses, t-shirts, mugs), various visualizations and monitoring tools (real-time with 0% CPU rather than meta-refresh every 5 seconds of 100% canvas rendering) all of which rely on plugins or complicated hacks.

@Antheus:
So you're saying that 3D will have a bigger part in online appearances, not only in browser games? This does indeed sound interesting. We wouldn't be limited to 2D surfaces anymore, being able to experience a 'real visual environment'.
This would also mean that more 3D developers will come up out there, making it a less frightening subject, and, over time, will make it easier for everyone to use. And then, some years later, we're gonna have flying cars and teleporters for persons..;o) hehe.

I'm really interested what comes out of this.

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Original post by Antheus In browser, they go completely unused. The $500 GPU burning 200W in today's machine is no better for the task than Tseng4000 VGA card was 20 years ago.

2D Hardware acceleration has been around since the early 90's, and todays 3D cards also accelerate 2D. Having 3.6Ghz GDDR5 on an 8Gbps bus is a lot different to having 45Mhz SGRAM on a 16Mhz bus, even for browsing...

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Original post by Antheus Quote: Original post by owl This is the future of gaming. Q2 had sub-par graphics when it came out originally. You know, over a decade ago. Q1 was cool back in the day when people were amazed at real-time pseudo-3D scenes made out of 25 triangles. And today, in the age of multi-GPU configurations which can do bazillion phong-shaded, bump mapped, SSAO shaded triangles people get excited over the fact that Q1 and Q2 barely work... In other news, I have made a wheel. It's not really round, but it's a start. I expect it to be usable in real world in some 5-10 years.

Please, like most forum users on here, refrain from using analogies. They're terrible, not analogies in general but the ones you and most other people come up with.

Appreciate it.