The same graphics software running on several major devices.

SAN FRANCISCO -- First-person shooter games don't appeal to Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology guru and the guy who created JavaScript nearly two decades ago. He doesn't let his kids play them, either, he says. But he was so excited on Friday about showing off the potential of a new browser codec called ORBX.js at Autodesk's One Market Street offices here that he began playing Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 "Sanctuary" level in a room of 20 or so witnesses.

As Eich maneuvered somewhat awkwardly through the onslaught of opponents, Jules Urbach, CEO and founder of OTOY, Mozilla's partner in creating the new HTML5 codec, explained what we were seeing. "The app is running 600 miles away, but it's running [here] at full stream," he said.

Eich confirmed the gameplay felt as seamless as it looked: "I don't feel any latency here," he said.

Eich was able to play the game in a build of Firefox Nightly using a combination of the new ORBX.js and the recently released ASM.js and Emscripten tools. To give an idea of the complexity of what's in ORBX.js, Eich said that while it took four days to com... [Read more]