Written by Tom Wickline

Friday, 19 March 2010 03:21

By Dan Kegel to the wine-devel mailing list.

Were happy to announce a new open source project called Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine, or ANGLE for short. The goal of ANGLE is to layer WebGLs subset of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API over DirectX 9.0c API calls. Were open-sourcing ANGLE under the BSD license as an early work-in-progress, but when complete, it will enable browsers like Google Chrome to run WebGL content on Windows computers without having to rely on OpenGL drivers.

Current browser implementations of WebGL need to be able to issue graphics commands to desktop OpenGL to render content. This requirement isnt a problem on computers running OS X or Linux, where OpenGL is the primary 3D API and therefore enjoys solid support. On Windows, however, most graphics-intensive apps use Microsoft Direct3D APIs instead of OpenGL, so OpenGL drivers are not always available. Unfortunately, this situation means that even if they have powerful graphics hardware, many Windows machines can't render WebGL content because they don't have the necessary OpenGL drivers installed. ANGLE will allow Windows users to run WebGL content without having to find and install new drivers for their system.

Because ANGLE aims to implement most of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, the project may also be useful for developers who are working on applications for mobile and embedded devices. ANGLE should make it simpler to prototype these applications on Windows, and also gives developers new options for deploying production versions of their code to the desktop.

We hope that other WebGL implementors and others in the graphics community will join us to make ANGLE successful! For more info on ANGLE and to access the code repository, visit the new project on Google Code or join our discussion group."

So, itd be interesting to see if it runs on Wine. I love stacking them blocks as high as I can :-)

For more information on ANGLE see :
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/introducing-angle-project.html

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atarivandio 2010-03-19 08:13:40

So basically your converting a free standard into a non-free standard. Great, your doing Microsoft's
job for them only this time it's not java, but an entire graphics stack.

You know that the fact a
popular browser runs better on alternative OS's is incentive for Microsoft to change their 'GL'
implementation, right?

This whole post in general gives me an eerie feeling.

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Stephan Sokolow 2010-03-19 09:47:14

I had the same reaction over on the Google dev blog and a good point was made there, followed by a
good point over on either Techdirt or OSNews.

This isn't like Java and J++. This is side-stepping
an indirect attempt to give Silverlight an advantage on Windows machines.

1. Microsoft WANTS WebGL
to fail and Silverlight to be the platform of choice.
2. People who use WebGL will find OpenGL
somewhat familiar... therefore giving it an advantage over DirectX in the "developers moving
from web to native code" arena.
3. This ensures WebGL's availability on platforms where only the
DirectX drivers are usable.

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More analysis needed?

nevyn 2010-03-19 11:11:08

This seems a rather... odd move. Let's look at this a little more closely.

MS has never really
given OpenGL the respect it's deserved - instead hindering it on the Windows platform in favour of
their own DirectX implementations.

MS have released Silverlight and it looks like history could be
repeating.

The question then becomes, can webGL distinguish itself enough that hardware vendors
start to provide suitable drivers for openGL? If not, then Angle probably is just what's needed.
(either that or start an effort to provide Open Source drivers on the Windows platform).

Otherwise,
if webGL has hardware looking silly, but hardware vendors see Angle and see it as a suitable
solution to their lack of openGL drivers, then Angle is doing the community a great harm.

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