I realize that this is just a small tech demo, but even still -- GL is only part of the equation. The kind of platform optimizations that are eeked out in the game industry are substantial and extend well beyond just the GPU.
The interest in web (flash) games was largely driven by the difficulty of distributing casual native games -- and that's quickly becoming a solved problem.
I wouldn't say it's "amazing", but it's definitely "upvoteable" for two reasons:
1. I don't have to install it. This means I can satisfy my desire for instant gratification and quickly go back and upvote it.
2. I support open standards. I'll upvote it just for the fact that it's implemented in WebGL and not some proprietary bullshit, and I'll continue to do this until all the proprietary bullshit is long dead and gone.
The fanaticism surrounding your second point is very popular on the internet and is quite interesting to think about. What exactly is the problem? I don't have a hard answer, but let's objectively compare the advantages against a standard, closed-source mid 90's commercial PC game.
Longevity: x86 is in no danger of disappearing, and even if it was, popular open-source x86 emulators and virtual machines exist, with better performance and compatibility than a lot of WebGL implementations.
Proprietary platform: x86 has a very long history and is approximately perfectly documented. On the other hand, every browser implements WebGL slightly differently.
Can't see the source: Javascript can be minified and obfuscated to the point of incoherence. On the x86 side, i feel that this would be better addressed by improving assembly education: Everything is open source if you have a disassembler.
Software Freedoms: It's inherently more free, in the RMS sense, to have the content locally on your own computer than it is to stream it from somewhere else.
Comments
These posts remind me of the "put a bird on it" sketch. All you need to do is "put a 'web' on it" and suddenly it's amazing.
Color me unconvinced, but we're looking at graphics that are roughly on par with what we saw desktops games in 1999: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R2nCrsDHeA
I realize that this is just a small tech demo, but even still -- GL is only part of the equation. The kind of platform optimizations that are eeked out in the game industry are substantial and extend well beyond just the GPU.
The interest in web (flash) games was largely driven by the difficulty of distributing casual native games -- and that's quickly becoming a solved problem.
I wouldn't say it's "amazing", but it's definitely "upvoteable" for two reasons:
1. I don't have to install it. This means I can satisfy my desire for instant gratification and quickly go back and upvote it.
2. I support open standards. I'll upvote it just for the fact that it's implemented in WebGL and not some proprietary bullshit, and I'll continue to do this until all the proprietary bullshit is long dead and gone.
The fanaticism surrounding your second point is very popular on the internet and is quite interesting to think about. What exactly is the problem? I don't have a hard answer, but let's objectively compare the advantages against a standard, closed-source mid 90's commercial PC game.
Longevity: x86 is in no danger of disappearing, and even if it was, popular open-source x86 emulators and virtual machines exist, with better performance and compatibility than a lot of WebGL implementations.
Proprietary platform: x86 has a very long history and is approximately perfectly documented. On the other hand, every browser implements WebGL slightly differently.
Can't see the source: Javascript can be minified and obfuscated to the point of incoherence. On the x86 side, i feel that this would be better addressed by improving assembly education: Everything is open source if you have a disassembler.
Software Freedoms: It's inherently more free, in the RMS sense, to have the content locally on your own computer than it is to stream it from somewhere else.