Khronos Details WebGL Initiative to Bring Hardware-Accelerated 3D Graphics to the Internet

By DE Editors

The Khronos Group has announced more details on its new WebGL working group for enabling hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in Web pages without the need for browser plug-ins.  

First announced at the Game Developers Conference in March of 2009, the WebGL working group includes many industry leaders such as AMD, Ericsson, Google, Mozilla, NVIDIA, and Opera. The WebGL working group is defining a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0 to enable rich 3D graphics within a browser on any platform supporting the OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics standards. The working group is developing the specification to provide content portability across diverse browsers and platforms, including the capability of portable, secure shader programs. WebGL will be a royalty-free standard that is targeted for a first public release in first half of 2010. 

The WebGL specification will leverage recent developments in Web technology including the Canvas element defined as part of the HTML 5 specification and the marked increases in JavaScript performance across all major browsers. 

For more information, visit The Khronos Group.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.