Communications of the ACM
With Draft Standard, 3d Web Closer to Reality
The Khronos Group and Mozilla have announced the release of WebGL, a new standard for enabling Web browsers to support three-dimensional (3D) graphics. The draft standard is based on the Khronos Group's OpenGL graphics interface and lets Javascript developers take advantage of the fact that most video cards already support 3D graphics. The group is looking for commentary from Web developers and people who might be involved with WebGL, so that a final specification can be produced in early 2010, says WebGL chairman Arun Ranganathn.
Although Microsoft has not announced whether it will provide support for WebGL in Internet Explorer, all four of Internet Explorer's major competitors have endorsed WebGL, and developing versions of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome already have it built in. Eventually, building 3D support into the Web could advance the user interfaces of Web applications.
WebGL is not the only 3D Web standard under development. Google is developing its own O3D project, which is currently a browser plug-in, but will be built directly into Google's Chrome browser.
From CNet
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