Show HN: WebGL Enabler for iOS

by daeken • 14 years ago

53 57 14 years ago

daeken11• 14 years ago

I submitted this a couple days ago at a pretty bad time (middle of the US night) and it died pretty quickly. I figured I'd wait until v0.0.2 to throw it back up here, and that's now out. It seems to be working quite nicely on all iOS 4.2+ devices, though some of the older iPhones have performance issues it seems. Hope you guys enjoy this.

infinitivium• 14 years ago

This is badass! But, once again something Apple should have already given developers.

Thanks for putting this together, hopefully it spurs them along.

cccbbb7• 14 years ago

It's not like Apple forgot about this feature. It just isn't ready which is why it's not enabled. It will be released when it's ready.

veb• 14 years ago

In the mean time you can use OPs link.

DanielRibeiro• 14 years ago

Former discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4029365

hartror• 14 years ago

So it immediately raises the question why isn't this released?

The reasons I can think of are:

* Performance isn't what they want yet.

* Implementation isn't what they want yet.

* There are security issues they still need to fix.

OR putting on my tin foil hat for a second:

* Apple sees WebGL as a possible threat to their app revenues as a soild WebGL implementation could allow developers to avoid entering their app market place and instead charge users directly. It would also allow developers to deploy to other platforms with the same code base.

Obviously the last point is a bit nutty but one can't help but wonder if it is a consideration.

daeken11• 14 years ago

I've spent a lot of time playing with this over the last two days, and it's absolutely the implementation not being where they want it yet. There are definite stability issues with more intensive scenes, though it generally works pretty nicely. I imagine that's why they allow it for iAds, where they can monitor the quality and test it across devices. Hopefully with iOS 6 my tweak won't be needed any longer.

frou_dh• 14 years ago

It's hardly a tin foil theory. Even if it isn't the primary reason WebGL isn't enabled at the moment, higher-end games moving out of the App Store and into the browser must weigh on their mind.

cccbbb7• 14 years ago

His program essentially leaks beta software for profit.

daeken11• 14 years ago

Agreed. I don't know what I'd do without the $20.60 I've made off of this (before Paypal fees)...

knowaveragejoe• 14 years ago

...except you don't have to pay a cent for it.

othermaciej• 14 years ago

I wouldn't recommend using the WebGL enabling hack at present, for security reasons. But then, people who are jailbreaking their phones in the first place are probably making a different security vs. features tradeoff.

fpgeek2• 14 years ago

Feeding your tinfoil hat for the moment... Isn't the implementation of Angry Birds in desktop Chrome built using WebGL?

cccbbb7• 14 years ago

You're encouraging people to pay for this internal setting toggle, that Apple didn't default to 'On' for a reason (not being finished)? Where is the value in this? You are basically charging for Apples incomplete software.

daeken11• 14 years ago

The value is that people want to use WebGL now, as seen by the almost 1000 people who have downloaded the software over the last few days. However, I have no idea how one can put a price on something of this sort, which is why you could pay $0 or $500 for it if you want. I tend to believe that saving people from a couple of hours of tinkering (writing the same tweak I have, basically) is worth at least $1, but people have thrown in anywhere from $0.10 to $5.

cccbbb7• 14 years ago

But they're not "using" WebGL other than seeing a demo of it. There's absolutely no interaction. I bet at least half of your downloads expect they'll magically be able to have fully compatible WebGL games. Now that would be software worth paying for, provided it wasn't a settings toggle.

koeselitz• 14 years ago

This is exclusively for jailbroken phones. Shouldn't you be more upset at the people who are jailbreaking their phones?

wavephorm4• 14 years ago

Like how Apple has sabotaged the use of HTML5 Audio, I think it is unlikely they will enable WebGL. It provides developers an open platform for developing games, which conflicts with Apple's closed system agenda.

melling• 14 years ago

Apple has helped keep OpenGL alive. Microsoft is the company that simply refuses to support it. Think we'll be seeing WebGL on IE anytime soon? Microsoft could have gone with OpenGL but they invented DirectX instead on the desktop. Apple does support OpenGL on their phone, it's just not in the browser, so I would think writing games for Android and iOS should be doable, right? Windows Phone 8? Probably not.

st3fan• 14 years ago

How have they sabotaged HTML Audio?

phoboslab• 14 years ago

By not supporting Ogg Vorbis on Desktop and totally fucking it up on Mobile on purpose:

http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/03/the-state-of-html5-audi... (Year old, but still valid)

huskyr• 14 years ago

The biggest problem is definitely not the lack of OGG support but the disabling of autoplay on iOS: http://weblogs.vpro.nl/digitaal/2011/11/04/why-html5-audiovi...

wavephorm4• 14 years ago

It's impossible to build an iOS game for Safari that has sound. They've limited the API by only allowing a single audio channel that can only be used during touchscreen actions. You can't programmatically play a sound, eg like when a collision occurs.

seclorum• 14 years ago

Audio cannot be played automatically -only when a user event occurs.

Audio cannot be streamed playlist-style, one after the other - again, it always requires user input.

So this screws things up completely for html5-based games with audio.

satu2• 14 years ago

WebGL Enabler won't work well with all existing WebGL demos, but there's a cache of them to tryout at http://www.webgl.com and http://www.chromeexperiments.com

daeken11• 14 years ago

Two things to note about testing existing demos/games: 1) It supports 0 vertex shader texture units, which breaks some of the more interesting demos (I think this is an implementation thing, rather than a hardware limitation, at least on the higher end devices; the iPad 3 has to support this stuff), 2) Most demos and games use onmousedown/move/up rather than ontouch*, which causes them to break. I'm trying to come up with a decent solution to run these existing demos.

DHowett2• 14 years ago

Free, open-source, and ten months old.

https://github.com/rpetrich/WebGLEnabler

daeken11• 14 years ago

I saw that after my first release, but 1) this is free-ish (you can choose to pay whatever amount you want) and open source ( https://github.com/daeken/WebGLEnabler ) as well, 2) mine works at the WebView level rather than Safari, and includes a toggle in settings.

That said, I would've used a different name had I known about that before I released.

Edit: Oh, I'm wrong. I could've sworn that his was just for Safari, but I just saw in the source that I'm wrong. He just works at the WebFrame level rather than WebView.

DHowett2• 14 years ago

Ouch, sorry for not paying better attention; I didn't notice the source to yours. Both approaches appear equally valid and yours appears to be rather more fleshed-out (what with preferences).

I didn't mean to denigrate your project, as well: I apologize if it seemed that way!

I quite enjoy seeing people use Theos/Logos as well. Definitely worth sinking my time into working on them!

conradev• 14 years ago

One a random note, it would be cool to see AppList integrated into the preferences to allow for per-app toggling.

mappu• 14 years ago

I know jailbreaking doesn't immediately imply piracy, but this is another example in the fine tradition of pirates getting the better product. The recent Quasar window manager for iOS is another example.

Show HN: WebGL Enabler for iOS

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