Google, Ambiera show off what WebGL and HTML5 can do for browser-based 3D gaming

An article by Bilal    No Comments

One day in the not-so-distant future, we’ll all be playing plug-in free games thanks to technologies like HTML5 and WebGL.

It all sounds good, but what about a demo? Ok, says Google. How about a little Quake 2 in your browser?

They started off with Bytonic Software’s Jake2, a Java port of the open source Quake engine. From there, they re-compiled the engine using the Google Web Toolkit (also OSS), created a WebGL renderer to display the graphics, moved multiplayer communications from UDP to WebSockets (part of the HTML5 spec), and bolted on an emulated filesystem to allow game and preference saves.

Google’s not the only one pushing web 3d, of course. Ambiera’s Copperlicht is another exciting project. It’s a JavaScript 3D engine which, like Google’s recompile, utilizes WebGL and the HTML5 canvas tag. No browser plug-ins required!

Ambiera has some impressive screens posted of Copperlicht-powered Quake 3 — check ‘em out after the break!