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Ask HN: Creating full websites using WebGL?

5 points by lungful ↗ HN
I was amazed by many webGL online examples and demos and it made me wonder why webGL isn't being used everywhere to create complete websites already.

Am I missing something here? Is webGL too hard to use (even with libraries like three.js), or is it browser compatibility issues? Why is it that I'm not seeing webGL implemented everywhere online already? Isn't it better in most aspects visually speaking?

6 comments

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_random_
This would be ideal, we just need some brave people. Then add XAML support, and we can finally have <grid> instead of a <table-bootstrap-crap class="are-you-serious">.
theandrewbailey
I think it's because the web is a document based system, and very few collections of documents are worth viewing in a 3D environment, especially without looking cheezy, fake, or being distracting. It's much the same reason that 3D Word docs and PDFs aren't popular.
muyyatin
It's somewhat similar to a Flash-only website, since it has less support and most notably lacks many of the features HTML makes easy (search engine indexing, browser search-and-find, ease of development, layout, and separation of content from style).
flohofwoe
For websites that don't need text or layout WebGL might actually be a good option. If you need text or layout, then you would need to write a text- and layout engine in JS+WebGL and duplicate what the browser already does anyway, so the web site would have to be quite heavy. Both can wonderfully work hand-in-hand however, as demonstrated here: http://acko.net/
jev
Text is hard, and HTML/CSS has a monopoly on it in the browser.