Lately the buzz of HTML 5 is all around the web. Some say its okay if iPad doesn’t have flash, because there is HTML 5. Some say, HTML 5 won’t rescue us and simply can’t replace flash yet.

Well, whether or not HTML 5  can or cannot do. At least it brings WebGL a hardware accelerated 3D render framework onto our modern day web browser.

WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element

For now HTML 5 WebGL hardware accelerated 3D render is functionally disabled by default, however you can enable them in Chrome, Latest Firefox, and Safari. (no IE support for now)

For Chrome add the following in the Target filed in properties.

chrome.exe –no-sandbox –enable-webgl

Note that enabling WebGL currently requires disabling Chromium’s security sandbox, which is strongly discouraged for arbitrary web browsing. Work is ongoing to remove this requirement.

For Firefox you need to download the latest build here and enable this in:

type about:config into the address bar, search for "webgl", and double-click "webgl.enabled_for_all_sites" to set it to true

Here is a demo of what WebGL can do in your browser. (Keep in mind that you need to have some sort of graphic hardware present else this will not work)

You can give it try with some of live demo Quake 3, Toy Car. It’s an endless possibility for future web gaming.

For more WebGL info see here

Update: For Safari, it only supports WebGL on Macs running Snow Leopard. So if you are on Leopard or Windows or Linux, try to use the other 2 browser Chrome and Firefox instead.

[via ajaxian]