How can we begin to talk about 3D computer graphics without first acknowledging the initiative of ‘The Khronos Group’ and their willingness to take on the responsibility in creating standardised specifications for all users. An open minded non-profit who are also a collaborative consortium consisting of over 170 industry-leading companies that are dedicated to the advancement of 3D web technology and nothing else. focusing on cutting edge techniques within fields such as:
- 3D graphics – WebGL
- Augmented Reality – OpenXR
- Virtual reality – OpenXR
- Parallel computation – OpenCL
- Machine Learning – OpenVX
- Computer Vision Acceleration – OpenVX
What is unique about this group is that all members of competing companies set aside their differences to objectively build a better standard for 3D graphics. A community who are open to discuss innovative approaches and to share mutual understanding of challenges faced by the industry, then solve it together.
In order to provide more context into the background of 3D web graphics, we should start with WebGL 1.0, which was initially released back in March 2011. Now before you ask this perfectly valid question “How come I’m not seeing more 3D websites in production?”. First of all, to roll out a new specification takes time, even with the latest adoption of new tech will always be on the sceptical side for some people. To put it simply, the inconsistency of risking browser support and the chance that the compatibility of the user’s device won’t allow your website to run was a real threat.
Experimental chrome projects from the early days showcased what the web of the future could be like and look, this was back in 2011.“
WebGL 1.0 was only fully supported by over 80% of browsers in September 2014, three and a half years later. The digital vision of the potential use cases of an interactive 3D web was limitless, however, what you need to understand was that WebGL is in fact a low level 3D graphics api based on OpenGL ES. Nobody at the time would have any idea of how to engage or learn about this topic with limited resources, although this wasn’t impossible for the creative ones.
WebGL 2.0 was announced in 2017 and delivered the OpenGL ES 3.0 providing access to additional key feature sets, including transform feedback, instanced rendering, multiple render targets, uniform buffer objects and occlusion queries. All in all, the advantages to the graphical and performance improvements means that we can now fully appreciate physically based rendering to our 3D scenes available on the web.
Unbeknown to most people, accessibility to render 3D graphics on the web, honestly really isn’t as much of a problem anymore and reliability is more consistent compared to the old days.
WebGL 2.0 is now supported by all major browsers in 2022, let’s get creative !
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.