Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Demonstrations
There are many wonderful applications that show the power of WebGL. One of the best-known demos
human anatomy. Another site with impressive applications is
www.chromeexperiments.com/webgl
a
nd two
of my favorites are a realistic water pool demo (
http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/
)
and a jellyfish
And existing games, such as
Quake II
, have been ported to WebGL.
OS, graphics card, and browser support
WebGL is a very new emerging technology. As such, unfortunately, not every computer supports it. In
order to view a WebGL program, you need a new browser, a newer graphics card, and Operating System.
The following browsers support WebGL:
Firefox 4+
Safari 5+
Chrome 10+
Opera 11.1+
Support by these browsers is somewhat expected when you consider that Mozilla, Apple, Google, and
Opera all belong to the working group of WebGL under Khronos. Microsoft, which produces DirectX, does
not currently belong to the group or officially support WebGL within Internet Explorer (IE). However,
workarounds, such as ChromeFrame and IEWebGL, do exist for IE. For more information, visit the
following web site:
Furthermore, because of the potential for severe system crashes related to WebGL when running
Windows XP, Chrome has opted to blacklist WebGL on the Windows XP operating system. According to
supports WebGL on the following operating systems:
Windows Vista and Windows 7 (recommended)
Mac OS 10.5 and Mac OS 10.6 (recommended)
Linux
This web page also lists some graphics cards that are not supported. It is recommended that you update
your graphics card drivers for optimal WebGL support. If your graphics card does not support OpenGL 2.0,
(which, as you may recall, is what OpenGL ES 2.0 is based on) then WebGL will not work with WebGL on
Mac and Linux.
