Opera releases WebGL & Hardware accelerated browser preview

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More than 3 years on, Opera have released a public preview build of their browser, with a standards-based 3D canvas implementation using WebGL for Windows. In 2007 they had released a preview build showing an implementation of a 3D canvas context.

Opera have been working on a WebGL implementation since early 2009, when the standardization process started. Due to frequent changes in the standard, it had been difficult to commit to a WebGL implementation; but now that it has matured and stabilized, Opera felt it was the right time to release a public implementation of the standard within their browser.

For those who have never heard of WebGL, it is a context to the canvas element which gives you hardware-accelerated 3D rendering in JavaScript. The API is based on OpenGL ES 2.0, which means that it is possible to run WebGL on many different devices, such as desktop computers, mobile phones and TVs. More information can be found here at the Khronos wiki.

The Hardware acceleration in this build is a bit different from what other browsers are doing. Much like IE9 and Firefox 4, do full hardware acceleration of all draw operations - but then, unlike those browsers, who only offer this acceleration on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the implementation will run on any OS with sufficient hardware support. This means full hardware acceleration can be achieved on Windows XP, Linux, Mac OS X and OpenGL ES 2 capable devices such as recent smart-phones and web-enabled TVs.

You can grab the preview build here, and please note that this requires an OpenGL 2.x compatible graphics card and related drivers for hardware acceleration and WebGL to work.

Also, Tim Johansson notes on the Opera Developer blog some limitations; "Neither WebGL nor hardware acceleration will be included in the upcoming release of Opera 11.10 for desktop. Some other aspects, such as SVG rendering, may not work correctly. We will continue working on these new features – fixing on all remaining bugs and optimizing our code – and we will release further preview builds to keep you up to date with our progress."

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Opera: Full cross-platform hardware acceleration coming

Hardware acceleration has become the holy grail of browser development in the past year, as the technology to increase browser performance by tapping graphics cards to help with Web site rendering has advanced from the theoretical to the practical. Despite Opera being a longtime developer and advocate of hardware acceleration standards, and the first major browser maker to demonstrate hardware acceleration in use, no publicly released version of Opera included the technology--until today.

Opera 11.50 (direct download) is a rough alpha, unstable, not for daily use, and limited to Windows computers, but it does have hardware acceleration. This means that JavaScript-based 3D rendering can be viewed using Opera, which basically means that highly complex, non-Flash-based in-site animation will be supported by the browser.

A screenshot of WebGL implementation in action on Opera 11.50 alpha.

Opera promised in a blog post that its hardware acceleration will differ from its competitors. Unlike Internet Explorer 9's hardware acceleration--which is limited to Windows 7 and Vista, or Firefox 4's, which is fully available on Windows 7 and Vista but limited on Windows XP, Mac, and Linux--the way that Opera has built its hardware acceleration allows it to be used in full on any computer with the hardware to support it. This means that not only will Opera's hardware acceleration support Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X, and Linux, but that Web-enabled televisions and devices such as smartphones will also be able to use it. Opera says that any device that uses the OpenGL ES 2 standard will work with it.

The current implementation of hardware acceleration in Opera 11.50 alpha is limited to OpenGL support. A Direct3D backend is planned for future versions and before 11.50 gets pushed to the public. You can see if your installation of Opera 11.50 alpha has the OpenGL hardware acceleration working by typing opera:about into the location bar, and looking to see if the "Vega backend" entry lists "OpenGL". If it says "Software," then your computer graphics card doesn't support OpenGL 2.x hardware acceleration.

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