We will look at WebGL for e-commerce, but we want to be sensitive to the development costs. As a result, we begin with using existing assets before jumping into developing 3D models of the parts for sale online. Nearly all websites have existing product images. The goal here is to integrate those images in a WebGL website, while still using the features of a 3D environment to navigate the products on that website.
This project distinguishes WebGL from X3D, which was introduced in Project 1, Building Great Web3D. WebGL involves JavaScript beyond handling button clicks and shader language programming that involves coding on the graphics card. Most software programs, such as Microsoft Word and your web browser, run exclusively on the CPU. However, in the last few years, graphics applications such as video games and computer-aided design have taken advantage of the simultaneous processing capabilities of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).