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by georgemcbay 4945 days ago
Warning: cool game of the week requires [Chrome developer channel|Firefox nightly] to run. Also does not run well on [Mac|Windows|Linux].

It is both funny and sad that in these days of the "open" web it is actually much, much more difficult to get good cross platform results when doing anything with graphics/sound.
2 comments
lloeki 4945 days ago
Games like X-Type[0] make me think things are getting there. The making-of is interesting[1].

[0]: http://phoboslab.org/xtype/

[1]: http://phoboslab.org/log/2012/06/x-type-making-of

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ygra 4945 days ago
Yeah, well, but x-type only requires a 2D canvas and that has worked for ages now, even without hw acceleration. WebGL is still a very different beast that can work, or not, or only crappily, depending on your browser, OS, graphics card and driver. I guess the percentage of those who don't have or dislike Flash is smaller than that of those who run into WebGL problems.
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lloeki 4945 days ago
Agreed, canvas works well now, but WebGL is younger than canvas, and this gives a hint at what WebGL will look like tomorrow.

What's more today the first cause of WebGL not working lies more in the graphics card periphery. OpenGL drivers on Windows are often an aftertought given DirectX prevalence, and on Linux some drivers are simply unstable with 3D acceleration, regardless of WebGL. Besides, short of software fallbacks like llvm-pipe or OSX, you can't invent features not supported by the card. Onve overriden[2] WebGL actually works[0][1] well on my embedded HD2000, but bugs in the driver make the whole thing randomly unstable, hence it is blacklisted by browsers (chrome://gpu even lists and links to bug reports, and lists Flash Stage3D as blacklisted too).

As for number counting, while the number of people running into WebGL problems exists, it has been drastically reduced since a year ago, when the number of people running into Flash problems for years, and is not shrinking.

ALso, there's not just graphics on X-Type, but correctly timed HTML5 audio too.

[0]: http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/

[1]: http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_cars.html

[2]: "Override software rendering list" in chrome://flags

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andybak 4945 days ago
There is an important difference which is that is a time of transition. There's nothing stopping anyone getting their browsers into shape and these APIs are slowly solidifying.

The story with Flash was much more single-vendor-dependent despite the half-hearted noises Adobe made over the years about supporting alternative implementations.

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