WebGL Draft Specification Published, Comes One Step Closer To Our Phones 22
Ars Technica is reporting that the Khronos Group, the organization responsible for the development of WebGL, released the WebGL provisonal public draft specification early last week, marking an important milestone in standardizing what is shaping up to be a truly cutting edge web technology.
For those unfamiliar, WebGL is a cross-platform and royalty free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0 that offers a way to render 3D graphics in the browser without requiring plugins such as Adobe's Flash (which is coming to webOS next year) and Microsoft's Silverlight. Since webOS is based largely on web technologies, and applications are essentially web apps, this bodes well for Palm's platform.
We've seen some amazing things done with the technology prior to the draft specification being released. We have a couple of demos (in Flash, not webGL :| ) after the break!
Notable examples include a Tower Defense demo written by Yohei Simomae on the desktop:
And on a mobile device with a WebGL demo done on a Nokia N900:
WebGL has come a long way since it was first announced back in March, but the technology is still in its infancy and still has a long way to go before we'll see it implemented in a meaningful way in the mobile space as Ben Galbraith, Palm's Co-Director of Developer Relations points out during the company's keynote speech at the Sprint Open Developer Conference back in October.
It's my prediction that we'll see CSS 3D Transforms implemented in webOS much sooner than we will WebGL. CSS 3D Transforms have the potential to substantially speed up these devices as some of the heavy lifting in menu transitions and UI elements can be handled by the GPU.
Those interested in learning more about (or even contributing to) this up and coming Web should visit the WebGL public Wiki.
Thanks to rlopin for the tip!
22 Comments
Very excited
I love the Cube Defense game!! App request!!!!
Deff, lookin good when can we get
Great news
that was quick! Glad they are moving along quickly with the webGL standard.
all others platforms are obsolete. webos is the far advance platform that will lead the future.
THIS IS IT!!!!!!!!
but when will the PRE support OpenGL?...
WebGL is the JavaScript wrapper around OpenGL. Phone has to have OpenGL under the hood to support WebGL.
i know that... what i should have asked is when is the SDK gonna allow access to OpenGL
I'm actually more impressed with the CSS 3D Transforms. I really underestimated their potential.
While I still think a phone OS based on HTML, JS and CSS is a very risky and maybe not the best idea, I must admit that on a long-term view Palm might actually not be that wrong with their strategy... assuming of course they somehow manage to survive the next two to three years till WebGL acutally becomes a deal.
Seeing what CSS 3D Transforms can do and hoping Palm starts making use of that rather today than tomorrow, WebOS might actually stand a chance.
First, the word "infancy" is not a word I like. I was an infant once and I am not going back to that. I do not want to know what will happen years from now. I want to know what we can do in 1- 4 months. Let me give you a case. If I showed you a 1000 bill and stated that you can have it. You would get happy but then if I stated that you could have it sometime in the future like maybe 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 yrs down the line. That does not sound so good. What we need is here and now. What i listed is the basics needed. Nothing major like your phone doing the dishes or changing your car tires. Just the basics needed to make a great phone.
Nothing hard here to think about. No smoke and mirrors. Simple concept of bring people together.
1st - solid looks
2nd - solid design (small but nice to look at. not to complex with buttons everywhere want it simple. unibody design with few movable parts. fills nice in your hand and on your waist.) Think portability & connectivity.
3rd - nice interface that is not to complex (multitouch and gestures to remove the amount of buttons on the device)
4th - have to make it easy to interact with the device (multitouch, onscreen kb, voice control, and voice typing). Physical kb are old school. they allow for the original device design to be weakened. Who would want to physically type when they can voice type. It can be very hard to type with the little keys and a little screen. Would it not be better to quickly voice type (a, b, c space, back, etc). Also need voice gestures (command back to home, back page, bookmarks, etc). No phone currently has good voice gestures and the one that does will be the new kid on the block.
5th - full net. Apps are old school. The smartphone is not a p.c. and it will never will be. The phone is a connector. The cellular has the potential to serve full internet but yet none has so far. I want a phone that has capability like my internet browser. I want real book marks That can subdivided and create sections and subsections. Do not want to type the web address in of the sites that I have visited several times. Want instant fill in.
6th - video/picture (screen capture) camera with ability to interface with the net, emails, youtube etc. Also picture manipulation before you post the picture. Video conferencing would not be bad either.
7th audio recording with ability to interface with the net, emails, etc.
8th copy paste. Also want to function to send docs or pictures to faxes/etc.
9th cloud service that you can get access to when you are on your pc/mac. Ability to make changes to what is instantly backed up and to see what is backed up. When the cloud puts you material back on it will also put the preferences as they where before. Also allows for a 1 week period of backup check just incase you need a single file only. Something like several time capsules that are retrievable.
10 GPS, BT, WIFI (want wifi or bt transfer of files throw away the wires. Also make it seamless to interface with the p.c./mac)
11 replaceable battery.
12 multitask, mp3, mp4, etc function
13 games that allow you to interact with others (multiplayer games whether it be over the internet or the person next to you)
14 retrieves emails in a timely fashions so that I can stay in touch with business partners.
Get a SMART NETPHONE and throw away the smart phone in the same basket that your pda was placed (the obsolete basket)
All this need to out of the box features. not something you add on later. Then a good app store that concentrates more on quality the quantity. Look at apples app store and it is very fragmented and full of several worthless app probably around 95% if not more of their apps are worthless.
I just want to thank my fellow work collegue Derrick who actually sent me this tip on an internal email distro list I started at my job for WebOS users. I then forwarded his tip to Precentral.
Here is what he said in his email to me:
"A new and exciting technology has been finalized: WebGL. This technology will allow complex 3D graphics to be integrated into conventional Web content. It has been theorized that since the Pre is so heavily reliant
on Web technology, that it would be the first to reap the benefits of this new technology. Here's to hoping that's true!"
But what's with the GPU drivers. I can't believe they aren't on our devices yet and also can't believe they even sold the pre without it. I mean I just can imagine how great the PRE will be with it. It will hopefully rock my world again as the m105 did in the old times ;).
Hands up for 3D support!
REMEMBER EVERYONE!!!! Webos is only six month into our existence. We have the best top engineer working progressively on many aspects of this platform and to assist him, we've got the right people to developing this system to it's full potential. wikipedia all the web engineers that came onboard for this platform project. it's almost the perfect combination to this equation.Understanding if you can't then i think it time for you to find a new home because it going to be a working.
Come on man, what phone manufacturer has all this after 6mos?! nobody. I hope they get there too, bt let's check back after a year and maybe another carrier later. I think its beginning to roll now. This platform's gaining momentum, not losing it.
No phone has all this, regardless of make/ age.
In all fairness palm pre has been out longer than 6 months. If you look at when it was announced then that makes it a year old. The plan is not to wait for another phone maker to come out with the main design that will satisfy 90% of most persons needs. Why we buy the pre if that phone was out. The concern is that the game is changing. The are two very aggressive innovative phone makers out there. We are just a hop skip and a jump from seeing what we all want. That is a game changer and the others will be just followers. Any way if you look at it the previous palms had the option to record video. What is up with the back track. We need to be first. No followers here. Nobody wants to say I have the second best phone. There is only first place (the only place). No excuses needed just work on it.
Palm is stuck in the difficult position of having a fantastic vision, but not having the money/time to get there. had they waited to release the Pre, another more financially stable company (google) would have take all there potential customers. So they were forced to release give something. I'm sure they would like to add all the things you want, but they don't have the man power or funds to do it all over night.
and they are working on it.
Who would voice type in any circumstance besides when alone? Just asking; maybe I'm oversensitive but I'd never. I have wondered just how difficult a letter-by-letter recognition system really would have to be to set up tho. Surely not that hard. Especially because you could calibrate each letter instead of doing several words and letting the program try to work out the rest of the English (German, Latin) language on its own. Hey, that's a concept app that is NOT country-specific! Guess we'll need mic access first though. Good thought.
Well if you are driving you can voice type the address, when you want to get a contact you can voice type part of their name, when you are ebaying, craigs listing, web surfing, there are a lot of things you can voice type. Even none personal text messages. Just try thinking about every time you type on your phone. Then think which event you would not mind if someone saw what you were typing. Then you would have your answer. As for the voice commands/typing versus physical kb. You save money since there is no different physical kb to change. Software level change gives you typing in english, german, russian, chinese, japan. Like my german car sates "Achtung". Yea yea somewhat funny but not really.
Thanks for sharing this information.
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