WebGL enabled in Firefox nightlies

[David Gerard-2]

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/webgl-in-firefox-nightly-builds-demoed-with-3d-spore-model.ars

This is actually a library usable with JavaScript. But the question
does occur to me: is there anything in this we could use? Content it
was previously unfeasible to serve?


- d.

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[bawolff]

> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:29:08 +0100
> From: David Gerard <dgerard@...>
> Subject: [Commons-l] WebGL enabled in Firefox nightlies
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l@...>
> Message-ID:
>       <fbad4e140909220829w6c20fff4n23f5ae4e80b6873d@...>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/webgl-in-firefox-nightly-builds-demoed-with-3d-spore-model.ars
>
> This is actually a library usable with JavaScript. But the question
> does occur to me: is there anything in this we could use? Content it
> was previously unfeasible to serve?
>
>
> - d.

We could display 3d world files (VRML and what not. which honestly
this whole webGL thing imho seems to vrml/x3d what canvas is to svg -
two sides of the same coin. but than again i'm not all that familiar
with it). I'm not sure how useful that'd be. Could display 3d shapes
perhaps where the user could control the viewpoint.  Maybe to make
3d-tour esque things where you could look arround a place. Overall the
uses of such a thing seem rather minimal.

-bawolff

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/9/22 bawolff <bawolff+wn@...>:

> We could display 3d world files (VRML and what not. which honestly
> this whole webGL thing imho seems to vrml/x3d what canvas is to svg -
> two sides of the same coin. but than again i'm not all that familiar
> with it). I'm not sure how useful that'd be. Could display 3d shapes
> perhaps where the user could control the viewpoint.  Maybe to make
> 3d-tour esque things where you could look arround a place. Overall the
> uses of such a thing seem rather minimal.


Displaying 3D models is an obvious and useful one! I wonder if the
rendering speed is useful. (The Firefox 3 and 3.5 SVG renderer is
usably accurate, but *really slow*.)

We'd probably need a server-side renderer to drop back to. But yeah,
that's a use for this.


- d.

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[bawolff]

Now that i think about it, this could probably be useful for
displaying chemical molecules. From what i understand jmol has been on
the wishlist for quite a while. I don't know how much would be
involved in this, but we could conceivably make a js molecule viewer
(on the theory js is better than java). At the very least it could
display simple molecules.
--
- bawolff
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.



On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:31 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:

> 2009/9/22 bawolff <bawolff+wn@...>:
>
>> We could display 3d world files (VRML and what not. which honestly
>> this whole webGL thing imho seems to vrml/x3d what canvas is to svg -
>> two sides of the same coin. but than again i'm not all that familiar
>> with it). I'm not sure how useful that'd be. Could display 3d shapes
>> perhaps where the user could control the viewpoint.  Maybe to make
>> 3d-tour esque things where you could look arround a place. Overall the
>> uses of such a thing seem rather minimal.
>
>
> Displaying 3D models is an obvious and useful one! I wonder if the
> rendering speed is useful. (The Firefox 3 and 3.5 SVG renderer is
> usably accurate, but *really slow*.)
>
> We'd probably need a server-side renderer to drop back to. But yeah,
> that's a use for this.
>
>
> - d.
>

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/9/23 bawolff <bawolff+wn@...>:

> Now that i think about it, this could probably be useful for
> displaying chemical molecules. From what i understand jmol has been on
> the wishlist for quite a while. I don't know how much would be
> involved in this, but we could conceivably make a js molecule viewer
> (on the theory js is better than java). At the very least it could
> display simple molecules.


:-O That's a fantastic idea!

Get coding ;-)


- d.

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[geni]

2009/9/24 David Gerard <dgerard@...>:

> 2009/9/23 bawolff <bawolff+wn@...>:
>
>> Now that i think about it, this could probably be useful for
>> displaying chemical molecules. From what i understand jmol has been on
>> the wishlist for quite a while. I don't know how much would be
>> involved in this, but we could conceivably make a js molecule viewer
>> (on the theory js is better than java). At the very least it could
>> display simple molecules.
>
>
> :-O That's a fantastic idea!
>
> Get coding ;-)
>
>
> - d.

Chemical models are something with a proven history in this area
(usually implemented through java applets if online).  Other options
would be being able to examine things like moons from all angles
(where enough images exist) at admittedly low resolution.

At least would be an improvement on this like this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iorotateing1day.ogg

I'm sure millhist could find a use for it as well as wider use by
people dealing with historical objects that no longer exist (I
certainly like to create a model of a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_lock )

There isn't a that much free software that can do modeling 3-D
chemical structures (Biclipse may be able to do it haven't tried)
otherwise it might be possible to outright buy the rights to some of
the older bits of software (anyone know what happened to Nemesis?).

For more complex stuff we would likely have to rely on models by third parties.

The potential problem is that we do not want to become a "only really
works in firefox" site. There was enough trouble caused by people
building sites that only really worked in IE. We do not want to create
the situation anew with firefox.


--
geni

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/9/25 geni <geniice@...>:

> The potential problem is that we do not want to become a "only really
> works in firefox" site. There was enough trouble caused by people
> building sites that only really worked in IE. We do not want to create
> the situation anew with firefox.


And Safari, and Chrome. Webkit and Gecko strikes me as a reasonable
spread at first.

Presumably a Java applet will be needed for those who aren't running
something that can handle WebGL.


- d.

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[Hay (Husky)]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 1:39 AM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:
> And Safari, and Chrome. Webkit and Gecko strikes me as a reasonable
> spread at first.
Note that there's a "competing" Google standard called O3D doing more
or less the same thing, although in a different way:

http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/

Afaik Google has said to be commited to supporing both standards.
Mozilla is doing the same, although O3D is currently only available as
a plugin for Firefox and not as a built-in library like WebGL.

More background info:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/08/webgl-standard-to-bring-3d-web-without-browser-plugins.ars

-- Hay

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[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

David Gerard, 22/09/2009 17:29:
> This is actually a library usable with JavaScript. But the question
> does occur to me: is there anything in this we could use? Content it
> was previously unfeasible to serve?

There are several proposals on Strategy wiki to implement similar
feature: e.g. this
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Java_applet_support (see
also the category
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposals_for_graphics-related_features 
).

Nemo

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[bawolff]

> And Safari, and Chrome. Webkit and Gecko strikes me as a reasonable
> spread at first.
>
> Presumably a Java applet will be needed for those who aren't running
> something that can handle WebGL.
>
>
> - d.

Back from the old days of VRML - I remember there used to be a plugin
called shout3D and another one called BLAXXUN3D which could render a
limited subset of vrml with java. However its very doubtful they'd be
Free.

-bawolff

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[Daniel Schwen-2]

> Back from the old days of VRML - I remember there used to be a plugin

Uhm, VRML is dead. And it's successor is not WebGL, but X3D. There are
plenty of plugins for all operating systems. FreeWRL [1] and
InstantPlayer [2]
being two of the more active projects

[1] http://freewrl.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.instantreality.org/downloads/

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[bawolff]

> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:46:18 -0500
> From: Daniel Schwen <lists@...>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] WebGL enabled in Firefox nightlies
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l@...>
> Message-ID:
>       <b4326860909251746t9dc83a5j1a0dbdb669708765@...>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> > Back from the old days of VRML - I remember there used to be a plugin
>
> Uhm, VRML is dead. And it's successor is not WebGL, but X3D. There are
> plenty of plugins for all operating systems. FreeWRL [1] and
> InstantPlayer [2]
> being two of the more active projects
>
> [1] http://freewrl.sourceforge.net/
> [2] http://www.instantreality.org/downloads/

Yes i know - the point being (and bear in mind i don't know very much
about 3d stuff, so take anything i say with salt) that if we wanted to
display some content natively to firefox using web gl, and than have a
java applet as a back up if no native support. (like we do for ogg).
the java vrml players were java applets that displayed 3d things,
hence i assume they could be used as a backup (I have no idea if thats
true or not). The point of it being java is that people wouldn't have
to download plugin

-Cheers,
bawolff.

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[geni]

This may be of interest as a potential source of material if we could
get them to work with us.

http://southdownsliving.blogspot.com/2009/10/3d-wikipedia-of-art.html


--
geni

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