Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

By : Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor
5 (1)
Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor

Overview of this book

As highly interactive applications have become an increasingly important part of the user experience, WebGL is a unique and cutting-edge technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the web. Packed with 80+ examples, this book guides readers through the landscape of real-time computer graphics using WebGL 2. Each chapter covers foundational concepts in 3D graphics programming with various implementations. Topics are always associated with exercises for a hands-on approach to learning. This book presents a clear roadmap to learning real-time 3D computer graphics with WebGL 2. Each chapter starts with a summary of the learning goals for the chapter, followed by a detailed description of each topic. The book offers example-rich, up-to-date introductions to a wide range of essential 3D computer graphics topics, including rendering, colors, textures, transformations, framebuffers, lights, surfaces, blending, geometry construction, advanced techniques, and more. With each chapter, you will "level up" your 3D graphics programming skills. This book will become your trustworthy companion in developing highly interactive 3D web applications with WebGL and JavaScript.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

What's New in WebGL 2?

As of January 27, 2016, WebGL 2 is available by default in Firefox and Chrome. This means that you will automatically have access to WebGL 2 without any additional dependencies, as long as you use one of the following browsers:

  • Firefox 51 or above
  • Google Chrome 56 or above
  • Chrome for Android 64 or above
WebGL 2 Support

For an updated list of the browsers that support WebGL 2, please visit the Khronos Group web page by following this link: http://www.khronos.org/WebGL/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementation. Or, you can visit the well-known CanIUse.com resource at: https://caniuse.com/#search=WebGL 2.

As described in Chapter 1, Getting Started, WebGL 1 is based on OpenGL ES 2.0; therefore, it doesn’t expose features like query timers, compute shaders, uniform buffers, and so on. That being said, with WebGL 2 (based on OpenGL ES 3.0), we are getting...