Why you should use WebGL
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Why you should use WebGL
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#2While the article is right WebGL isn't supported on iOS, supposedly it IS supported in iAd ads on iOS, which are HTML5. So it is to be expected some future version of iOS will expand this to webviews/Safari.
Also strange he says Unity has no support on mobile: While it's not supported in mobile browsers, creating mobile apps it one of its strengths, afaik.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#3Total lack of IE support is a bit...problematic.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#4Total lack of IE support is a bit...problematic.
IDK, if you want to run WebGL games you probably don't use IE anyway.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#5WebGL is great, but as a game developer that works with these technologies daily, it isn't ready for the mass market yet. The lack of mobile and IE support are deal-breakers for the short term. Give it a year or two and it'll be a whole different story.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#6WebGL is great, but as a game developer that works with these technologies daily, it isn't ready for the mass market yet. The lack of mobile and IE support are deal-breakers for the short term. Give it a year or two and it'll be a whole different story.
It will be great when support expands, but I don't see how those are really deal-breakers. Are there even any equivalent platforms that would suggest mobile and IE support will be required before WebGL takes off? Meanwhile Firefox + Chrome is hundreds of millions of potential users.
Yes, people will get confused and annoyed about why a game doesn't work in their browser of choice, because they don't really know what a browser is, or the difference between a mobile browser and a desktop browser. But that's no different than my mother wondering why her flash games don't work on her ipad, and flash games are still a substantial (if not always stable) market.
The real problem holding back rapid progress, I think, is that lack of strong development tools, and that's (very slowly) being worked on.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#7WebGL is great, but as a game developer that works with these technologies daily, it isn't ready for the mass market yet. The lack of mobile and IE support are deal-breakers for the short term. Give it a year or two and it'll be a whole different story.
Interesting. Could you expand a bit on this? Why is the lack IE and mobile support so much of a deal breaker?
I don't have much experience developing games, so i'm asking those questions mostly from curiosity. Aren't game developers used to choosing some platform while sacrificing other?
I mean, i always found it quite curious that on consoles for example it expected to find games that only work for one or two consoles, it is OK if some game runs on PS3 but doesn't run on PS1 & 2, not on XBox, nor on the Wii (nor on PCs, mobile phones, tablets, etc), thus "losing" a lot of market share; while on the web the expected behavior is that things should run on all possible browsers, and it's unacceptable to lose any substantial portion of the market share by not supporting some deficient browser.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#8While the article is right WebGL isn't supported on iOS, supposedly it IS supported in iAd ads on iOS, which are HTML5. So it is to be expected some future version of iOS will expand this to webviews/Safari. Also strange he says Unity has no support on mobile: While it's not supported in mobile browsers, creating mobile apps it one of its strengths, afaik.
It's definitely supported in iAds, and you can enable WebGL in an iOS UIWebView via private APIs today (you just won't be able to release it). There's a few places with details, but here's an implementation you can grab off github: https://github.com/benvanik/WebGLBrowser
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#9Total lack of IE support is a bit...problematic.
IDK, if you want to run WebGL games you probably don't use IE anyway.
It is not an issue of users who want to run WebGL games, it is an issue of developers who want to target customers who run IE. In that sense, you are still virtually forced to use Flash if you want to hit the largest possible market.
Niche / hardcore game developers can potentially ignore this but if you are going for mass market you really can't.
Re: Why you should use WebGL
#10WebGL is great, but as a game developer that works with these technologies daily, it isn't ready for the mass market yet. The lack of mobile and IE support are deal-breakers for the short term. Give it a year or two and it'll be a whole different story.
WebGL is supported by Opera Mobile and Firefox for Android. The next version of the Backberry browser and Chrome for Android will support it, too.
It's very unlikely that IE will ever support WebGL, because Microsoft is against OpenGL in general. If you start with OpenGL, you probably won't bother with DirectX, which means you won't tie yourself to their ecosystem. That's obviously not in their interest.
Fortunately, IE has been constantly losing market share for the last 4 years.