Not to disagree with your fundamental point -- JavaScript and WebGL has a ways to go yet -- but what computer are you thinking of? 1999 was the year of Quake II

Not to disagree with your fundamental point -- JavaScript and WebGL has a ways to go yet -- but what computer are you thinking of? 1999 was the year of Quake III, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life, which looked like this[0] with fully-baked maps. This game smoothly renders thousands of dynamic polys with shading and stencil shadows, not to mention anti-aliased typography, at 1440x900 with about 30% CPU on my MBA. It's a little more impressive than you make it sound. [0] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Quake_III_Arena_q3dm0.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Quake_III_Aren... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/Unreal_tournament.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/Unreal_tournam... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/SurfaceTensionHLS.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/SurfaceTension...