IE11 To Support WebGL 111
mikejuk writes "The biggest problem with IE10 as far as modern web apps go is its lack of WebGL support. Now we have strong evidence that IE11 will support WebGL. A leaked build of Windows 'Blue,' aka Windows 8.1, also contained an early version of IE11. Web developer François Remy decided to see what it was hiding and found that there were WebGL APIs, but they were non-functional. Rafael Rivera, who writes the Within Windows blog, dug a little deeper and discovered the registry keys that have to be changed to enable WebGL support. Apparently the API works so well that you can take existing WebGL programs (with OpenGL shaders) and just run them. As the implementation also supports DirectX HLSL shaders, it seems reasonable to guess that the implementation maps OpenGL to DirectX, thus avoiding Microsoft having to endorse OpenGL use."
Re:Another ASP debacle (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like the alleged hole that supposedly left Microsoft with no choice but to remove NPAPI plugin support from IE back in the 1990s?
Frankly, this is huge. Direct3D is probably Microsoft's second most effective tool for locking-in users (behind MSOffice) and the single most effective tool for locking-in developers. To officially support its open competitor -and in a way that would allow apps (read: games) to actually be played on other platforms, no less- is uncharacteristic of them, to put it mildly. Are they so afraid of WebGL's potential that they see simply supporting it as less risky than embrace-extend-extinguish?
Re:Another ASP debacle (Score:4, Insightful)
The other option is that they're in step one of the embrace-extend-extinguish dance.