It's kind of a gift for those of us who are really late to the 3D CG game and have to play catch-up with all the awesome techniques, algos and shaders that were developed over the last 8-or-so years but who have been working on the web all these years... for once, us old dogs can learn old tricks and still be totally cutting edge!
But personally I think this is just the beginning. To get from 1994 quality (Doom) to 2004 levels (as you say) in-the-browser didn't take "us" 10 years but more like 1-3. When WebGL and "desktop GL" will slowly but surely converge over the next 3-8 years, it will be a real game changer. People will rave about popping up completely new kinds of "3D games" casually and instantly "in the browser". It'll be awesome. It's not too late to jump on the bandwagon and finally we're now also at a fairly stable point where it's not too early either. WebGL in Chrome and Firefox is solid these days. Keeps getting better. Opera is committed to it too. It's cross-platform. And IE? There's 'Chrome Frame' for that (or alternatively some obscure plugin called "iewebgl" or some such, although Chrome Frame should be more sensible).
WebGL and desktop GL will slowly converge? Isn't WebGL already basically just a JS API for OpenGL? Doesn't that make them already relatively converged?
WebGL is a JS binding for OpenGL ES 2, the same version of OpenGL that is used on smartphones. It is not as flexible as OpenGL proper ("desktop GL"), which has more features. OpenGL ES 3 will soon be bringing many of desktop GL's most important extra features to smartphones and the next version of WebGL, and it's not unthinkable that OpenGL ES could eventually take over as the main OpenGL API.
Exactly. Though I think the ES version will probably always lag behind due to Smartphones/Tablets being by necessity less powerful than Desktops/Laptops -- I'm secretly hoping there will eventually be a WebGL that (1) like today guarantees the ES feature set but (2) lets you query and "switch on" full-fledged desktop OpenGL capabilities just like WebGL extensions -- so that we can utilize more/all of the GPU if the GPU happens to be not on a Smartphone/Tablet but on a high-end desktop/laptop. Right now I think this is against Khronos design philosophy behind WebGL -- but eventually one of the implementors (Mozilla or WebKit) may have a strong need for this and add it. Here's hoping.
That's like saying "It's a little amusing how popular these web reimplementations of 2004-era word processors are". Dude, being on the web makes a huge difference. No software to install is massive. You can't link to a program running on your desktop. It's a great leap forward.
Hopefully JS/WebGL will help enable a client-server model for medical image analysis analogous to AWS/Hadoop/etc. JS has been successful not only for its ubiquity, but also because it - warts and all - hits a development sweet spot. Right now the big open source med image projects (MITK, Slicer, etc.) are almost all C++, so the barrier to entry is too high for some people who might be able to contribute substantially within the JS sweet spot.
Really? You feel that reimplementing a word processor on the web is a major leap forward? To me it looks like old wine in new bags. I could link to word processor-like Java Applets in 1998. I realize it's not 100% the same, but trying to re-implement all these things we've had for 10 years in substandard technology just seems like a procession of Echternach.
(btw current web word processors barely approach Wordpad level - the level of functionality we had on the desktop in 1995).
