WebView and WebGL

[John-Val Rose]

Getting back to the original issue, it's good to know that work is being done to implement WebGL support but I fear that the whole process will take longer than is really needed.

As I see it, JavaFX has one major competitor which is Qt. Naturally JavaFX lags behind Qt in features and performance as they basically had a 20 year head start!

But they do have a WebView with WebGL support and very advanced 3D features in general (like a 3D Canvas).  For JavaFX, it looks as though the 3D features have been "unofficially deprecated" as no enhancements are planned for JFX 10 and the existing features are rudimentary at best.

But... just getting WebView to support WebGL instantly gives JavaFX advanced 3D features via the multitude of WebGL libraries such as three.js etc. and the urgency for a dedicated 3D Canvas would be greatly reduced.

Further, Chromium (as used by Qt) is about to support WebGL 2 so the gulf is widening at a rapid pace.

Could someone please try to answer the following questions so I can get a better handle on where we are and what needs to be done:

1. Why wasn't WebGL support implemented from day zero given that WebKit supports it?

2. Is there some significant technical issue that makes WebGL implementation particularly difficult?

3. What is a brief overview of the work that needs to be done?

I ask because (as I said), I am willing to work on this feature with as much spare time as I can find and am keen to get going ASAP.

And it's not just a WebGL problem per se as the current WebView only supports Google Maps (one of the world's top websites) in Lite Mode which again limits the potential quite badly.

I hope these issues are related and can be addressed simultaneously.

Ultimately, I think it will be "fatal" if we have to wait another 4 years or so for Java 10 to get features that are already well developed in the competitor products.

Graciously,

John-Val Rose
Rosethorn Technology

> On 26 Aug 2017, at 23:46, Scott Palmer <swpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> +1
> 
> ... to Any high performance way to get images from native code to the screen in a JavaFX app.  I filed an enhancement request many years ago for a method to supply portions of the media pipeline for the media player APIs. 
> 
> I've also been asking for some way to get at a native surface context. Be it DirectX, OpenGL, Metal,... even just a native window handle.
> 
> 
> Scott
> 
>> On Aug 26, 2017, at 9:15 AM, Sten Nordstrom <stnordstrom at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Michael, all,
>> 
>> Just want to state my support for Michael's "Direct backed WritableImage".
>> Having a way to do natively-backed rendering is IMO the most important
>> feature still missing from FX. This is an area where QT is still way ahead
>> with it's OpenGL/OpenGL ES integration.
>> 
>> Having something like a direct-WritableImage implementation would also make
>> it easier to implement a video viewer using native decoder libs. Personally
>> I find this approach much more powerful than the existing FX 3D and media
>> streaming features, which are (especially 3D) limited in their
>> capabilities.
>> 
>> I will be at JavaOne this year, so if there is any interest in meeting up
>> and talking JavaFX I'm in!
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Sten Nordström
>> 
>>> On Fri, 25 Aug 2017 at 22.41 Michael Hoffer <info at michaelhoffer.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Jonathan, hi all,
>>> 
>>> I would like to bring up the "WritableImage backed by DirectBuffer"
>>> discussion again:
>>>