5 ms·

It's interesting to see so many people supporting webGL. Other than the "same X, but now X runs inside a browser" novelty aspect, I have yet to see any evidence

by ksk 12y ago

It's interesting to see so many people supporting webGL. Other than the "same X, but now X runs inside a browser" novelty aspect, I have yet to see any evidence that webGL does anything useful. To be fair, in this respect, it's no different from flash or javascript or any of the other technologies that people use to produce inferior replacements of native applications.

pjc50 12y ago
Running in a browser offers an (imperfect) security sandbox on a desktop PC, so people don't have to download and run untrusted executables. It also offers portability, and a certain amount of "copy protection". If your application is inherently networked, it works just fine in the browser.
- ksk 12y ago
  The sandbox is a feature afforded by the underlying OS and CPU architecture. I didn't quite understand your point. With regards to game distribution, I don't see any particular advantage that a browser has over something like Steam. You don't need to download multiple gigabytes either. You could design a game to stream levels/assets/etc on-demand. In any case, even with webGL, a game would need to do that.
  - lobo_tuerto 12y ago
    The thing is, it is in your browser. A machine without an internet browser is unheard of, the internet browser is everywhere. You can't say the same for Steam. It is convenient. What is it not understandable about that?
    - ksk 12y ago
      >The thing is, it is in your browser. I already excluded this part from my criticism. Please read my original comment. >You can't say the same for Steam. So, the solution to that is to create something like Steam, but better. Choosing an inferior technology is the opposite of a solution. I predict that advertisers are going to overuse webGL just like flash. We're going to see webGL blockers crop up the minute it gets any kind of traction. Certainly, I am not going to subject my machine to another malware vector.
      - lobo_tuerto 12y ago
        Technology evolves, and if you have been paying attention to browsers they have been getting better and better, and they will keep doing it.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    The sandbox is a feature afforded by the underlying OS and CPU architecture Absolutely not; the sandbox of Javascript apps is entirely within the browser. The CPU architecture may theoretically prevent a userspace app from breaking into ring 0, but that's not the interesting thing; you're trying to prevent random apps from gaining access to all the tasty data in userland. "Please do not download and run random executables" is a lesson that security people have been trying to get across for a while. Running a native game executable involves trusting it not to be malware. Running a webgl or HTML5 game does not. (The sandboxing of webgl may be dodgy, which is a weakness here.)
    - ksk 12y ago
      >Absolutely not; the sandbox of Javascript apps is entirely within the browser. The CPU architecture may theoretically prevent a userspace app from breaking into ring 0, but that's not the interesting thing; you're trying to prevent random apps from gaining access to all the tasty data in userland. I don't know why you felt compelled to state a categorical denial when the facts dispute it. Please read up on how security tokens work in Windows, for e.g. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625957.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625957.aspx > Running a native game executable involves trusting it not to be malware. Running a webgl or HTML5 game does not. There is no difference between those two executions in modern operating systems that implement mandatory access control.
ollybee 12y ago
http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/02/why-you-should-use-webgl/ http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/02/why-you-should-use-w...
- ksk 12y ago
  Thanks for the link, but if anything, it convinced me further that webGL continues to be an inferior alternative, in performance, resource consumption and feature parity, to existing, established 3D APIs like OpenGL/Direct3D/etc. Also, I do think the author is joking with regards to it being 'the best tested 3D API'. The author backs up this absurd claim with some 'thousands of tests' comment. Hello? Have they never visited shadertoy? Even trivial shaders cause webGL to crash because of the poor implementation quality. I refuse to believe that a person who has had any experience shipping OpenGL ES on multiple platforms could make such a statement.
_random_ 12y ago
It has three purposes: - potential future GUI solution to end the sad HTML5-only lock of the web; - useful for quick dirty prototypes/samples for full OpenGL tutorials; - generating HN karma: just find any old OpenGL sample (quality doesn't matter), convert it to WebGL, post on HN (make sure to add 'WebGL' and 'JavaScript' to title) - ka-ching!

by ksk 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago

Running in a browser offers an (imperfect) security sandbox on a desktop PC, so people don't have to download and run untrusted executables. It also offers portability, and a certain amount of "copy protection". If your application is inherently networked, it works just fine in the browser.

ksk 12y ago
The sandbox is a feature afforded by the underlying OS and CPU architecture. I didn't quite understand your point. With regards to game distribution, I don't see any particular advantage that a browser has over something like Steam. You don't need to download multiple gigabytes either. You could design a game to stream levels/assets/etc on-demand. In any case, even with webGL, a game would need to do that.
- lobo_tuerto 12y ago
  The thing is, it is in your browser. A machine without an internet browser is unheard of, the internet browser is everywhere. You can't say the same for Steam. It is convenient. What is it not understandable about that?
  - ksk 12y ago
    >The thing is, it is in your browser. I already excluded this part from my criticism. Please read my original comment. >You can't say the same for Steam. So, the solution to that is to create something like Steam, but better. Choosing an inferior technology is the opposite of a solution. I predict that advertisers are going to overuse webGL just like flash. We're going to see webGL blockers crop up the minute it gets any kind of traction. Certainly, I am not going to subject my machine to another malware vector.
    - lobo_tuerto 12y ago
      Technology evolves, and if you have been paying attention to browsers they have been getting better and better, and they will keep doing it.
- pjc50 12y ago
  The sandbox is a feature afforded by the underlying OS and CPU architecture Absolutely not; the sandbox of Javascript apps is entirely within the browser. The CPU architecture may theoretically prevent a userspace app from breaking into ring 0, but that's not the interesting thing; you're trying to prevent random apps from gaining access to all the tasty data in userland. "Please do not download and run random executables" is a lesson that security people have been trying to get across for a while. Running a native game executable involves trusting it not to be malware. Running a webgl or HTML5 game does not. (The sandboxing of webgl may be dodgy, which is a weakness here.)
  - ksk 12y ago
    >Absolutely not; the sandbox of Javascript apps is entirely within the browser. The CPU architecture may theoretically prevent a userspace app from breaking into ring 0, but that's not the interesting thing; you're trying to prevent random apps from gaining access to all the tasty data in userland. I don't know why you felt compelled to state a categorical denial when the facts dispute it. Please read up on how security tokens work in Windows, for e.g. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625957.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625957.aspx > Running a native game executable involves trusting it not to be malware. Running a webgl or HTML5 game does not. There is no difference between those two executions in modern operating systems that implement mandatory access control.

ollybee 12y ago

http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/02/why-you-should-use-webgl/ http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/02/why-you-should-use-w...

ksk 12y ago
Thanks for the link, but if anything, it convinced me further that webGL continues to be an inferior alternative, in performance, resource consumption and feature parity, to existing, established 3D APIs like OpenGL/Direct3D/etc. Also, I do think the author is joking with regards to it being 'the best tested 3D API'. The author backs up this absurd claim with some 'thousands of tests' comment. Hello? Have they never visited shadertoy? Even trivial shaders cause webGL to crash because of the poor implementation quality. I refuse to believe that a person who has had any experience shipping OpenGL ES on multiple platforms could make such a statement.

_random_ 12y ago

It has three purposes: - potential future GUI solution to end the sad HTML5-only lock of the web; - useful for quick dirty prototypes/samples for full OpenGL tutorials; - generating HN karma: just find any old OpenGL sample (quality doesn't matter), convert it to WebGL, post on HN (make sure to add 'WebGL' and 'JavaScript' to title) - ka-ching!