Khronos Group Details WebGL for Hardware Accelerated 3D Internet

The Khronos Group, today, announced more details surrounding its WebGL working group.  The new standard is billed as enabling hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in web pages without the need for browser plug-ins.  The standard was first announced at the Game Developers Conference in March.  The working group includes members from AMD, Ericsson, Google, Mozilla, NVIDIA and Opera.  They’re essentially defining a Javascript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0 so that any end point supporting the ES standard can operate hardware accelerated.

The Web has already seen the wide proliferation of compelling 2D graphical applications, and we think 3D is the next step for Firefox. We look forward to a new class of 3D-enriched Web applications within Canvas, and for creative synergy between OpenGL developers and Web developers,” said Arun Ranganathan of Mozilla and chair of the WebGL working group.

“Google is committed to open web standards and is very excited to be part of the WebGL initiative,” said Matt Papakipos, engineering director at Google. “We believe that WebGL is an important step toward making high-performance 3D possible in the browser.”

“The WebGL working group inside Khronos is a unique forum that is bringing together browser and silicon vendors to create a low-level, foundation API for 3D on the Web,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president at NVIDIA. “Khronos will be reaching out to the key Web standards groups and the wider community to ensure WebGL is an appropriate, dynamic and enabling piece of the Web ecosystem.”

The new standard working group doesn’t have direct applicability to HPC, but it is a first cousin.  As scientific and analytical scientists, we depend on powerful machines to not only perform our work, but analyze it as well.  How nice would it be to analyze your CFD runs on an iPhone from the golf course?  For more info, read the full release here.