Fur ball in WebGL

jsfiddle.net

49 points·anvaka··9 comments

Ported this guy from Flash (http://wonderfl.net/c/7au5 ) to JavaScript. Microsoft is really missing out with WebGL support, but I know why people are saying that plugins are dying...

I'm pretty impressed that in Chrome, the WebGL version has a considerably better framerate than the Flash version.

Same in Firefox. The Flash version is stuttery, the WebGL one is smooth.

Interestingly, my Firefox (13.0 on Ubuntu 11.04) consistently freezes for any WebGL example. The CPU load will just go full whack and nothing is every displayed. Eventually, I have to kill the process and restart the browser. Does anyone experience the same effect?

That's because the WebGL version is using your GPU and the Flash version isn't. The Flash version is done through the 2D drawing API which is equivalent to HTML5 canvas (i.e. CPU bound). So, in that respect, the Flash version is actually doing a pretty amazing job.

Nice! To be fair to the Flash version, it appears to be using the 2D drawing API (equivalent to HTML5 canvas). If the Flash version used Stage3D, performance would probably be equivalent to WebGL for this demo, since most of the work would be offloaded to the GPU.

The Flash version is not antialiased correctly for the number of steps it transverses though the masses move at a consistent frameratem, stuttery does not apply in correlation to the WebGL example. Change the FPS setting and it works smoother, AA aside.

The WebGL one has the distinct Javascrip cyclic micro pause in Firefox depending on number of browser tabs opened. It plays perfect on the latest Chrome.

Congrats.

Ahh, but can you comb it? :)

Very impressive compared to the Flash version. Minor nit: resizing the window make Furball do strange things. Google Chrome 19.0.1084.54 on Mac OS X 10.7.4

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