Mozilla and Google back 3D web

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 26 Mar 2009 at 09:35

Mozilla and Google are backing an effort to bring browser-based 3D graphics to the web.

Speaking at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group, threw open an invitation for companies to aid Khronos in creating a "royalty free standard for accelerated 3D on the web".

Trevett is proposing the creation on an API that would allow JavaScript to tap into the OpenGL graphics interface.

This could pave the way for 3D chatrooms and virtual worlds that don't require massive downloads first.

"The convergence of increasing JavaScript performance and pervasive access to accelerated OpenGL and OpenGL ES presents a potentially historic opportunity to make open, general purpose 3D capabilities available to web developers and web browsers everywhere," said Trevett.

Mozilla was the first to take up Trevett's invite: "We've been experimenting with bringing 3D capabilities to the web for some time now... this work has been going off and on for the past while, mainly as a side project of mine," says Mozilla's infrastructure engineer Vladimir Vukicevic.

"For a number of reasons, I think now is the time to bring this out into a wider audience, and to figure out what an initial take of 3D on the web should look like."

Google was similarly enthused: "With more and more content moving to the web and JavaScript getting faster every day, the time is right to create an open, general purpose API for accelerated 3D graphics on the web," says Matt Papakipos, engineering director at Google.

"Google looks forward to offering its expertise in graphics and web development to this discussion."