Browser based gaming, 3D rather than flash, what do I need to know

NicLeclerc · Oct 2010

Hi Everybody,
Im looking for companies and information on browser based gaming, 3D rather than flash. I would like information on workflows, software, polygons, Im aware of Jagex based in Cambridge. This looks like the next big thing and I would like to know a little more.
This is quite a big question but if any one has any information I would be really grateful.

Cheers

graytest · Oct 2010

I just wanted to mention Unity3D (which is a great engine) which can be used in a browser!

Cr · Oct 2010

Virtools!!!!! (the 3dwebplayer is called 3DVIA now)

Crapy render (only vertex shading, no normal map allowed...) but very easy and fast to do programing with, you can programing without any programing language knowledge (with the building blocks system)

There is a dev community

Richard Kain · Oct 2010

The Unity web player is considered to be one of the better options for 3D games online. It performs fairly well and is feature-rich.

HTML5's canvas will probably allow for web-based 3D eventually. For the moment it is still not considered a standard include, mainly due to Internet Explorer. Flash does allow for 3D graphics, but the performance is severely hampered by a lack of low-level hardware access. (little to no hardware acceleration)

CrazyButcher · Oct 2010

webGL should gain more and more momentum (especially once mobile browsers support it). Afaik both next major versions of Chrome and Firefox will have it enabled by default.

other than that, unity sounds best to go with.

rumblesushi · Oct 2010

At present HTML5 is a joke, Flash is going to get usable hardware accelerated 3D long before HTML5 does. At present HTML5 performs as well as AS1

Richard - Flash has no hardware acceleration at all apart from video decoding. All graphics rendering is 100% software.

If you want to do proper 3D, Unity is your best bet for the browser.

Revel · Oct 2010

I saw Shiva 3D the other day..looks promising, but not sure yet since I haven't tried it out. But yeah I heard people said Unity is the best for this kind of thing.

_Revel

thomasmahler · Oct 2010

Unity or bust.

bugo · Oct 2010

quest 3d is good too, no programming skills required, but logically you will need to know their workflow. Unity is your best choice tho.

lampekap · Oct 2010

jagex runs java for their games, you might want to look up some documentation of their engine.

edit: heres something about the runescape game engine from wikipedia: RuneScape uses a graphics engine called "RuneTek 5", which provides support for multiple graphics platforms such as DirectX, OpenGL and video game consoles, as well as graphical effects such as sky boxes, bloom lighting[85][86] and Z-buffering.[87] The high-detail version incorporates hardware acceleration and can be rendered using either Java OpenGL[88] or DirectX,[89][90] while Standard Detail can be run on computers running the Windows operating system

mziskandar · Oct 2010

At this moment, I'm sticking with shockwave..
F-15 Experiment

I'm looking forward on webGL in the future. Currently webGL (nightly chrome) does support acceleration on my old GFX (ati9600xt, XP and Ubuntu 10.4 + Edgers) with a limited extensions.

Browser based gaming, 3D rather than flash, what do I need to know

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