| Q&A |
 EnergizeGL,
Denny Koch
June 2010, |
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“With
WebGL we now can unleash the power of the graphics card
on top of that. Unlike with Plugins like Flash or Silverlight
you can use all the information on a website, like texts,
images, videos, browser-, network and user information
seamlessly.”
<EnergizeGL
polling Twitter and generating one rectangle for each
message in the current Twitter timeline. The size, colors
and rotating are representing the length of that message.
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| Q1 |
Please
give a brief description of EnergizeGL |
| A1 |
EnergizeGL
is a WebGL Framework. It does the basic OpenGL programming for
you and provides you with easy to use commands, so you can start
programming WebGL right away.
Most of the current WebGL Frameworks are obviously designed
to build games, or are addressing to skilled programmers by
using complex programming patterns like object orientation and
scene graphs.
My goal with EnergizeGL is to make it as simple as possible
for you to start programming your projects.
I'm an interface design student and therefore I'm interested
in things like generative design, social networks, information
visualization and the new ways website interfaces can be designed
with WebGL.
EnergizeGL is not only a Framework I develop, but will be my
daily used tool, too. |
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| Q2 |
There
are a lot of experiments conducted on webGL. What make webGL
so interesting although it is not finished yet? |
| A2 |
In
my opinion WebGL (in combination other HTML5 features) is a
big step in the history of the Web. At first there are the technical
advantages. You need no Plugin to run WebGL and it is open source,
so it will be developed by a wide range of people.
WebGL is based on OpenGL, an industry standard that is far behind
its early days, therefore running stable and there is a lot
of software available that could be ported to WebGL. More explicit
WebGL is based on OpenGL ES which is the OpenGL version running
on modern Cell-/Smartphones, so viewing 3D websites on your
Phone should be possible, too.
This is all about the technique. Whats really catching my attention
is how WebGL extends the way we can think about Web Interfaces
and 3D content either way. Javascript has become very performant
and with great tools like JQuery it is so easy to build more
interesting, useful and responsive web interfaces.
With WebGL we now can unleash the power of the graphics card
on top of that. Unlike with Plugins like Flash or Silverlight
you can use all the information on a website, like texts, images,
videos, browser-, network and user information seamlessly. Session
handling, multi tabbing, listening on user input and server
requests are tasks your browser natively performs and is really
good at. Local storage, WebSockets, HTML5 Audio and -Video are
going make the difference between websites with some media content
included, and webapplications, with every needed technique just
seamlessly working together.
Instead of building basic functionalities from scratch, a browser
environment allows you to focus completely on the quality of
your program and to spend more time thinking about your users!
This is the
real thrill for me, when it comes to WebGL (and HTML5). |
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| Q3 |
Actually
it's complex to enable webGL in a browsers. Is there a risk
that users find webGL to complicate? |
| A3 |
Yes!
I already got a customers asking for native 3D content, but
in my opinion, selling a WebGL site at this moment would be
unprofessional.
The current WebGL implementation is great for testing ideas
and developing the basic techniques but far away from being
ready for commercial use. |
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| Q4 |
What
is the current workflow to publish a 3D scene using EnergizeGL?
Is it possible to import 3d models from a DCC app? |
| A4 |
EnergizeGL
is rewritten at the moment, so there will be huge changes in
this process (it's being simplified), but at the moment you
need to:
- Download it
- Unpack it to a folder
- Include all JS Files in that folder into a HTML file
- Put a canvas tag into your DOM
- Write your EnergizeGL Program
Currently, it is possible to import Wavefront OBJ files and
i hope i can release COLLADA support with the rewritten version. |
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| Q5 |
Why
does EnergizGL give different visual results with chromium and
firefox? |
| A5 |
While
i was writing the first versions of EnergizeGL, i learned a
lot about WebGL, OpenGL, Shader and even Javascript. Thats why
i published it as an alpha version.
I drew less attention on compatibility, but that will change
from now on. The first lines of code of the new version have
been written and it runs in all three browser (WebKit, Chrome,
Minefield) and is producing the same visual results! |
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| Q6 |
What
are you plans with EnergizeGL? |
| A6 |
As
mentioned before i am rewriting the hole framework at the moment,
to implement a lot of features and techniques i came up with,
during my first experiments. A browser provides every kind of
tools and HTML combined with EnergizeGL will enable you to design
interfaces and interactive programs faster and easier than ever
before.
I hope the way I design EnergizeGL shows my ideas about the
future web and helps a lot of people to realize their projects! |
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