Web Applications

3D Canvas

By Arve Bersvendsen. Friday, 19. May 2006, 14:25:20

At this year's XTech conference, Opera's CTO Håkon Wium Lie did a demo of a hardware accelerated 3d canvas context, as illustrated by the screenshots from a 3d snake implementation done by our own Mathieu 'p01' HENRI

The implementation of the 3d canvas has existed internally for over a year, and shows that the browser is going in a very exciting direction. Soon, we hope to enable people like Benjamin Joffe to make his nice 3d demo even nicer.

Note that we are not the only ones that have been working on 3d in the browser, Vladimir Vukićević also demonstrated similar technology in Firefox at XTech. Synchronisity.

(And, oh, 3d snake is quite fun

)

A word on Widget style...Moving and resizing widgets

Comments

Jakub81 # 19. May 2006, 15:18

I believe it's fun. Too bad you didn't post a working demo and description of the 3d context... Maybe Opera should work closer with Mozilla on this?

Ramunas # 19. May 2006, 15:23

I`m going to love 3D canvas, keep up the good work

p01 # 19. May 2006, 15:29

The 3D canvas context still need a bit of work, but now that we demo'ed it publicly at XTech it's fine to tease you a bit

I agree we should work hand in hand with Mozilla on a common and sound specification.

And if you're somewhat familiar with OpenGL and 2D Canvas, 3D Canvas is bless. It's really easy to use. Man, I love my job!

Guille # 19. May 2006, 15:42

greeeeeeeeeeatttt!, this is so great!, I've been working on an 3D html engine for so long, it is so good to have it native on my browser

Congrats opera team!

sykora # 19. May 2006, 16:51

That's really good. Tonnes of possibilities

Benjamin Joffe # 19. May 2006, 18:08

Unbelievable. Although the images provided could be easily rendered well with the 2D context I imagine it has far greater pontential. I look forward to its public release.

Anonymous # 19. May 2006, 20:12

gandalf writes:

Jakub81: Actually, we've been discussing this stuff with Hakon after his talk, so, no need to fear :)

We're cooperate widely ;)

JibberJim # 19. May 2006, 20:43

IE4 shipped a 3D canvas, it didn't get much use, not surprisingly because 3D animations created in script really don't have that many use cases, it's a shame to see more features added because a developer thinks their cool, rather than actual use cases relevant to the developer.

fx910 # 20. May 2006, 07:16

When IE 4 shipped, most computers didn't have enough power to display good graphics fast enough. Also, the web is a lot mature now, with a huge army of developers trialling new tools, so I think it may well end up going somewhere.

Anonymous # 26. May 2006, 08:23

Anonymous writes:

I hope this is going to be like a full 3d version of html, with hypertext links in 3d space, etc. and not just a Flash-like applet-ish thing!

Raumkraut # 5. June 2006, 10:41

Whatever happened to VRML?

Benjamin Joffe # 7. June 2006, 08:57

I happened across another screenshot here: http://annevankesteren.nl/2006/05/canvas-3d

whisperstorm # 15. June 2006, 20:57

I would give my eye teeth to help test something like this. Who do I need to bribe over in opera land to get access to a test version/demo/spec ?

I have in mind a killer "casual" web game that would use this extensively.

AleksOD # 7. September 2006, 20:59

wow... imagine the possibilities... Half-Life on the go!

whisperstorm # 3. October 2006, 18:45

Any news on this feature? It would be really interesting to check out any demos...

creativemind # 8. October 2006, 22:19

awesome IM glad you guys are working on this cant wait til its operational
thanks for your hard work

Xavier Oddmon # 21. December 2006, 03:37

Is it just me, or does the textured demo appear really slow. It's an amazing system, I couldn't believe at first it wasn't flash. I'd love to see some more 3D content online.

p01 # 3. January 2007, 12:42

Fwiw, the 3D Snake game is also textured.

I'm a fan of TRON and wanted to do something in that vibrant style. The shiny gradients are made with 2 textures. One for triangles, one for quads. Also the game runs well on my 3yo laptop.