WebGL & HTML5 based on OpenGL ES 2.0 for the Web - Can it replace Flash?

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By Salar Golestanian @ Thursday, April 07, 2011 :: 2:22 PM :: 630 Views :: 0 Comments ::

Khronos Group is the Open Standards for Media Authoring and Acceleration which is a non-profit consortium of companies like Google, Apple, Intel, Mozilla and more dedicated to creating open standard APIs through which to display digital interactive media — across all platforms and devices. Has provided the graphics library that basically extends the functionality of JavaScript to allow it to create interactive 3D graphics within older browsers as a cross-platform API within the context of HTML5, it brings 3D graphics to the Web without using plug-ins.

Khronos has provided royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces. Developers familiar with OpenGL ES 2.0 will recognize WebGL as a Shader-based API using GLSL, with constructs that are semantically similar to those of the underlying OpenGL ES 2.0 API. It stays very close to the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, with some concessions made for what developers expect out of memory-managed languages such as JavaScript.

One example of this technology is done by Shy Shalom an Israely developer, as a personal project for learning WebGL and game engine design and implementation. The concept of cycleblob is based on the lighcycles game from the 1982 movie "TRON". In the original movie lightcycles played against each other on a flat grid and could only make 90 degree turns while on the grid. Cycleblob takes this idea to the next level and makes the grid a three-dimentional object, floating in space.

The big question is that can WebGL and HTML5 replace Flash? We need to explore some more, but most certainly, not all the functionalities of Flash. For 3D application development then the answer is probably yes. Here are some more examples shown and narocad.blogspot.com has a good article on the subject

WebGL is still at an early stage right now but it is seen by many to replace Adobe’s flash technology. A lot of major companies are currently supporting this new technology which should make it popular in no time at all. We do need a heavy weight like Adobe also to embrace it with tools to allow developers build without having to go too deep in the code. That is however unlikely as Adobe still relys on Flash for some of its revenue