Brace yourself for the 3D Web.

At least, if you use Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari. Those are the browsers that support--though sometimes only in developer-preview editions--a technology called WebGL. And today, the Khronos Group standardizing the graphics interface announced that WebGL 1.0 is finished.

Although WebGL has significant momentum, its prospects are significantly hampered by Microsoft's lack of enthusiasm. When I've asked Microsoft its feelings about it, the company expressed a preference for "using existing standards to build 3D today," pointing as an example to the Sky Beautiful demo site.

Granted, Microsoft has bit off a lot trying to modernize Internet Explorer with IE9, but WebGL is arguably a pretty important piece of the Web technology platform. Perhaps some reluctance can be explained by the fact that WebGL is based on the OpenGL graphics interface used on Mac OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android and that competes with Microsoft's DirectX.

If there's enough interest among Web developers, though--and those developers long have shown a fondness for IE alternatives--Microsoft could conclude that WebGL support is as important as other Web technologies such as Scalable Vector Graphics that only now are top priorities. WebGL is one of a suite of developing Web technologies that are gaining clout as a foundation for Web-based applications.

Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of products, thinks there's enough browser support already to attract programmers. "Between Firefox and Chrome, people will build stuff," he said in an interview.

And WebGL has some compelling possibilities. Microsoft's own Fish IE Tank demo, used to show off IE9's hardware acceleration, runs vastly faster in a Jeff Muizelaar's Fish IE demo rewritten to use WebGL--although not using its 3D features.

And Facebook sees WebGL's performance advantages for its nascent JSGameBench speed test. "Implement WebGL!" pleads Facebook's Bruce Rogers in a blog post about WebGL's benefits. "WebGL powerfully expands the design space available to Web developers and is not just for 3D content. Don't force developers and users to abandon their browser of choice in order to experience great Web content."

WebGL no doubt will enable Web developers to put annoying rotating cubes on their sites. But there are plenty of serious uses for the interface as well.

For example, the hardware-accelerated 3D graphics of WebGL are well suited to many games--not necessarily top-end first-person shooters, but certainly for maze exploration, rollercoaster rides, and races. Also, WebGL is good for bringing a 3D element to Google or Bing maps.

WebGL, though, is a very low-level interface many programmers can't be expected to master, especially in the sometimes lightweight world of casual online gaming. Happily, libraries are sprouting up to automate its usage.

"There is already a thriving middleware ecosystem around WebGL to provide a wide diversity of Web developers the ability to easily create compelling 3D content for WebGL-enabled browsers," Khronos said. "These tools include: C3DL, CopperLicht , EnergizeGL, GammaJS, GLGE, GTW, O3D, OSG.JS, SceneJS, SpiderGL, TDL, Three.js and X3DOM."

Some big competition for WebGL comes from Adobe Systems' Flash, which already is a major force in online gaming. Flash has lacked true 3D support, but that's changing. In the last week, Adobe released a preview version of Molehill, its 3D programming interface, in a Flash Player 11 "incubator build."

And like WebGL, Molehill is accompanied by higher-level libraries and is useful for more than just 3D.

"The power of Molehill does not stop [at] 3D," said Thibault Imbert, a product manager for Flash runtimes, on the Molehill announcement. "You should think about it as a new rendering engine tied to the GPU [graphics processing unit]. If you architect your application, Web site, or game correctly (by using classic techniques to leverage the GPU) you will be able to use Molehill in many situations, [including] 2D on GPU."

Another challenge will be reaching mobile browsers. It's coming though, as shown with work in the mobile version of Firefox, for example. With Android and iOS also supporting OpenGL ES 2.0, it should be mostly a matter of time before those influential operating systems' mobile browsers add the feature.

With WebGL version 1.0 released, though, and companies like mobile-phone chipmaker Qualcomm endorsing it, WebGL comes with a greater assurance of stability and support. Now it's up to allies and developers to build WebGL a full-fledged programming ecosystem.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

I've always been a fan of the Fight Night series of console games, so I couldn't wait to strap on the virtual mitts for EA's new Fight Night Champion for iPhone. After going a few rounds with Ali, Tyson, and 18 other boxing legends, I can safely say this: the game lives up to the Fight Night name.

Which is to say, it's fun but flawed. Fortunately, it's roughly a 90/10 split between the two. Anyone familiar with the console versions is sure to have a ball with this one.

The app probably comes closest (in gameplay, not graphics) to Fight Night 4. It gives you 20 famous boxers (and two from "the console storyline," to quote EA) to fight as and against, but you can also create your own character and build a career. This is no arcade-style boxing game a la Beast Boxing 3D--there's real depth here. Your character actually ages and faces eventual retirement.

As with its console counterparts, half the battle in Fight Night Champion is learning the controls. EA did a commendable job leveraging the touch screen, with actions that logically correspond to moves: tap to jab, swipe sideways to throw a hook, swipe up for an uppercut, tap and hold both thumbs to block, and so on.

But there's a lot to remember, so give yourself some time to learn everything. It took me three or four matches before I felt like I'd mastered the controls. And even now there's one area that gives me trouble: movement. You move your boxer by tilting your iPhone, and I find it really hard to multitask that alongside the various screen controls.

As for the actual gameplay, it's fast and furious, though I do have one gripe: when you block or slip a punch, there seems to be some lag before you can answer it. What's the point of good defense if you can't take advantage of it?

Also, the game crashed the first time I ran it. After resetting my iPhone, it worked--but this time with no audio. (Awesome crowd noises and ringside commentary accompany each bout.) Eventually it ran properly, but obviously EA has some bugs to iron out.

I wasn't able to test Fight Night Champion's multiplayer modes, which support head-to-head boxing over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. (Note: multiplayer requires a third- or fourth-gen iPod or iPhone.) In an ideal world, EA would add online multiplayer, as all the Fight Night games are best when played against other humans.

A few minor gripes aside, this is my favorite iPhone fighting game to date. All that's missing is an iPad version.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Just a few weeks after it updated its Android app, Twitter today sent out a major revamp of its free iPhone app to the iTunes App Store. As with most software updates, there are both good and bad changes here. The former definitely outweigh the latter, but Twitter needs to step in and correct one irritating addition. Here's the full list of changes.

What's welcome

• A redesigned Tweet compose screen with buttons for adding usernames, hashtags, photos, and location
• Automatically shortens URLs to 20 characters (I like this, though having the option to use a third-party source would be nice)
• Auto-complete of usernames and hashtags (my favorite addition)
• A cleaner interface for uploading photos
• Find users using your phone's contacts
• A better conversationlike view for direct messages. The interface now is similar to the iPhone's text messaging app (also very cool)
• Changes to preferences
• Bug fixes

What's not welcome
Unfortunately, you'll now find a "quick bar" at the top of your feed that shows trending tweets and hashtags, some of which are promoted. You can cycle through the selection by swiping left to right.

Though Twitter is promoting the convenience of never leaving your timeline, I found the quick bar to be nothing short of annoying. Not only does it resemble spam or a rotating ad, but also I don't really care what's trending at a certain moment. As I said, this is a welcome update, but I hope the quick bar is gone with the next one.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

When it comes to the competition between Flash and Web technologies, the latter camp has two big new allies in the online gaming industry: Zynga and Disney.

Zynga today mostly uses Adobe Systems' Flash technology as a foundation for its widely played CityVille and FarmVille online games. But an acquisition of a German company last fall is paving the way for a new foundation using technology that uses a browser, not a browser plug-in.

Zynga joined the World Wide Web consortium this week and will share the fruits of its Web-based gaming experience, said Paul Bakaus, chief technology officer of Zynga Germany, in a blog post Wednesday. Bakaus is creator of the jQuery UI library of user-interface elements for sophisticated Web pages, and Zynga acquired his company, Dextrose, last year.

And Disney Interactive Media Group, part of Walt Disney, acquired Finnish start-up Rocket Pack, TechCrunch reported today. Rocket Pack has been developing another foundation for Web-based games called Rocket Engine.

There's more, too. Motorola Mobility Ventures announced today it invested in Moblyng, which develops Web-technology games for mobile devices and social networks.

Those developments aren't enough to unseat Flash. But they exemplify the increasing attention paid not just to using the technology for Web games but for developing the underlying standards.

Competitively, Flash is a powerful incumbent, and games is one of its strong suits. Many experienced programmers use Flash already, often employing the serious coding tools Adobe sells. And Flash is a moving target: Just this week Adobe released a test version of its "Molehill" technology for hardware-accelerated 3D Flash graphics. Even as Adobe begins embracing Web technologies, for example by contributing to jQuery, it's also investing heavily in Flash.

Web standards have their advantages, too. Some reach iOS devices where Flash is banned and Android devices where Flash apps can struggle. And a large group of companies is working on bettering those Web standards.

At Dextrose, Bakaus was working on a game foundation called the Aves Engine based on Web technology, not Flash. Now Zynga wants to share its work involving those Web technologies, including the JavaScript programming language and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), with others, he said in the post.

Zynga has recently started investing heavily into the open Web stack. While most of our current games (CityVille, FarmVille) still run on Flash, our subsidiary in Germany is exclusively focussing on JavaScript driven game technology. We are building a new-generation engine to power future games that run platform independent and cross-device...

As we're doing something that (likely) hasn't been done before, a lot of our time is spent on research. Every day, we encounter new issues with the web stack, and we eventually realized that it doesn't make sense to keep all of it to ourselves. By joining W3C and actively contributing back and sharing our unique perspective, we hope to kill two birds with one stone: Improving our games, and improving the web for anyone building games.

Facebook, where millions of people play Zynga games, is paying close attention. It's been working on a Web gaming benchmark and last week released JSGameBench 0.3, a third incarnation of the work in progress. The test measures how fast a browser can show animated "sprites," graphical elements such as alien spaceships that move around the screen.

Web technologies use a wide variety of standards for browser games. One coming with HTML5 is called canvas for two-dimensional graphics. A canvas drawing area also can accommodate accelerated 3D graphics using another standard, WebGL. The Facebook benchmark engineers found dramatically faster sprite drawing performance using WebGL.

SVG is another important Web technology, and Bakaus now is a member of the W3C's SVG working group.

SVG is very useful for some types of graphics such as logos and icons, and it's got an important advantage over bitmapped graphics formats such as JPEG and PNG in that it can gracefully be zoomed to larger or smaller scales. For an illustration, visit an SVG demo site and use Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to zoom the browser in and out.

That SVG zooming is important for the varying screen sizes and pixel densities of smartphones, tablets, PCs, and TVs. Also nice: SVG rendering can be accelerated with graphics chips and, crucially, SVG is built into IE9.

But Bakaus is interested in SVG for another reason: seeing what can be applied to yet another Web technology standardized at the W3C, Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is getting more sophisticated as a way to draw drop shadows or to animate transitions such as moving photos around a screen.

"While we do not use SVG currently mainly due to implementation performance reasons, I'm looking forward to see what knowledge is hidden within the SVG spec than could be ported over," Bakaus said.

The new Web standards are at times rough around the edges, unstable, and inconsistently supported in browsers. But they're real, now. Mozilla, on the brink of releasing its first release candidate for Firefox 4, is promoting the new standards on its Web O' Wonders site, joining other envelope-pushing demos from Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Programmers have plenty of choices, and it's unlikely any single technology will win out. The Web technologies, though, clearly are a strong force that's growing stronger.

Originally posted at Deep Tech