4 ms·

This is the first use case of 3D/WebGL for actual web sites that I've found worthwhile. I could even see myself using a stereoscopic screen to browse sites like

by alt_ 13y ago

This is the first use case of 3D/WebGL for actual web sites that I've found worthwhile. I could even see myself using a stereoscopic screen to browse sites like these. No flashy fullscreen effects or epilepsy-inducing adverts, just clean 3D pop-ups to highlight content. It's just a shame that anti-aliasing isn't forced on by default; jagged edges should really have been left behind years ago.

kevingadd 13y ago
Antialiasing is actually the default for most WebGL implementations I've tested, but it's not possible to turn it on everywhere. There are still lots of devices out there too weak to actually do antialiasing for everything, along with buggy drivers that crash or produce garbled output in some scenarios with AA on. AA can also introduce artifacts into certain rendering algorithms designed for use without AA (it produces some really strange inputs in your pixel shaders...)
- w0utert 13y ago
  Yes, generic anti-aliasing for 3D graphics isn't as straightforward as modern desktop GPU's make it appear to be. The multi-sampling approach that desktop hardware uses is basically brute-forcing it, and doesn't work on mobile hardware that uses tile-based deferred rendering. Subpixel rendering only works for contours. Texture filtering requires you to model everything using bitmaps. Solutions that intelligently combine different techniques to get antialiasing without requiring MSAA have to be implemented manually because AFAIK OpenGL does not have any API's to do anything other than full-scene antialiasing using multisampling (GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH is basically useless, if it even exists in OpenGL ES). Antialiasing is actually a pretty hard topic unless you have lots of fillrate ;-)
  - mistercow 13y ago
    >Subpixel rendering only works for contours. That's simply not true. It works for any non-horizontal edge.
    - w0utert 13y ago
      If you have touching faces rendered using different shaders, different lighting/material properties and/or different textures, internal edges rendered using subpixel antialiasing will look bad, which is why FSAA using multisampling is the preferred way to antialias on any system that has sufficient fillrate.
sgt 13y ago
Using Chrome 28 - shouldn't the anti aliasing work out of the box? This demo looks very jagged for me as well, to the point I'm sure people will react negatively to it.
richardwhiuk 13y ago
What? How is this possibly 'worthwhile'? All it does is add some irritating effects to logos on a webpage.
- JTon 13y ago
  Huh? How are the pop out effects shown on the demo page irritating?
  - skrebbel 13y ago
    I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    How are they not? Seriously though, "irritating" is a matter of opinion. Explaining why something is irritating is like explaining why something tastes good.
    - yareally 13y ago
      Maybe my parents would think they're really neat and cool (as they have mentioned in similar things before to me), but I would object to that. While their claims of thinking that are perfectly rational from their own viewpoint (because they consider it novel and unique), I see it as an anti-pattern and distraction that gets in the way of productivity.
- alt_ 13y ago
  The effect conveys geometries and dimensions when activated that would otherwise require an animation. For simple objects this could save bandwidth and be resolution independent. While I do not advise using it everywhere, it is just one use case that I do not have a problem with and that could be a useful part of a designer's toolset. Think of it as a 3D version of animated SVG. I only noted this because most other uses of WebGL are unnecessarily flashy and irritating.
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  And flatten the battery on my laptop/phone faster.
eloff 13y ago
It's lame, bring in a whole bunch of heavyweight javascript for some annoying hover effects (the demo page is more than half a MB of JS, with threejs minified being 400K by itself.) There's no way that's a smart business move by any means, when we know that load time is inversely proportionate to sales.
shurcooL 13y ago
Strange, because anti-aliasing is clearly on for me by default. Chrome 28 on OS X.

by alt_ 13y ago

kevingadd 13y ago

Antialiasing is actually the default for most WebGL implementations I've tested, but it's not possible to turn it on everywhere. There are still lots of devices out there too weak to actually do antialiasing for everything, along with buggy drivers that crash or produce garbled output in some scenarios with AA on. AA can also introduce artifacts into certain rendering algorithms designed for use without AA (it produces some really strange inputs in your pixel shaders...)

w0utert 13y ago
Yes, generic anti-aliasing for 3D graphics isn't as straightforward as modern desktop GPU's make it appear to be. The multi-sampling approach that desktop hardware uses is basically brute-forcing it, and doesn't work on mobile hardware that uses tile-based deferred rendering. Subpixel rendering only works for contours. Texture filtering requires you to model everything using bitmaps. Solutions that intelligently combine different techniques to get antialiasing without requiring MSAA have to be implemented manually because AFAIK OpenGL does not have any API's to do anything other than full-scene antialiasing using multisampling (GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH is basically useless, if it even exists in OpenGL ES). Antialiasing is actually a pretty hard topic unless you have lots of fillrate ;-)
- mistercow 13y ago
  >Subpixel rendering only works for contours. That's simply not true. It works for any non-horizontal edge.
  - w0utert 13y ago
    If you have touching faces rendered using different shaders, different lighting/material properties and/or different textures, internal edges rendered using subpixel antialiasing will look bad, which is why FSAA using multisampling is the preferred way to antialias on any system that has sufficient fillrate.

sgt 13y ago

Using Chrome 28 - shouldn't the anti aliasing work out of the box? This demo looks very jagged for me as well, to the point I'm sure people will react negatively to it.

richardwhiuk 13y ago

What? How is this possibly 'worthwhile'? All it does is add some irritating effects to logos on a webpage.

JTon 13y ago
Huh? How are the pop out effects shown on the demo page irritating?
- skrebbel 13y ago
  I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  How are they not? Seriously though, "irritating" is a matter of opinion. Explaining why something is irritating is like explaining why something tastes good.
  - yareally 13y ago
    Maybe my parents would think they're really neat and cool (as they have mentioned in similar things before to me), but I would object to that. While their claims of thinking that are perfectly rational from their own viewpoint (because they consider it novel and unique), I see it as an anti-pattern and distraction that gets in the way of productivity.
alt_ 13y ago
The effect conveys geometries and dimensions when activated that would otherwise require an animation. For simple objects this could save bandwidth and be resolution independent. While I do not advise using it everywhere, it is just one use case that I do not have a problem with and that could be a useful part of a designer's toolset. Think of it as a 3D version of animated SVG. I only noted this because most other uses of WebGL are unnecessarily flashy and irritating.
voltagex_ 13y ago
And flatten the battery on my laptop/phone faster.

eloff 13y ago

It's lame, bring in a whole bunch of heavyweight javascript for some annoying hover effects (the demo page is more than half a MB of JS, with threejs minified being 400K by itself.) There's no way that's a smart business move by any means, when we know that load time is inversely proportionate to sales.

shurcooL 13y ago

Strange, because anti-aliasing is clearly on for me by default. Chrome 28 on OS X.