Thanks guys - that sounds like a good "angle" to approach this :-;
I too suspected that Windows and poor OpenGL support was at the heart of the matter after the decades-long "API Wars". I just didn't realise that OpenGL on Windows was that inferior/buggy to Direct3D (by design, of course!). I will start investigating and I definitely agree that it's not really just about WebView, although that's a good first candidate. I guess I'm just a bit disappointed that it has only been community members who have replied on this important issue. Surely my mission will be easier if Oracle guide and assist me... Graciously, John-Val Rose > On 10 Sep 2017, at 01:06, Mike Hearn <m...@plan99.net> wrote: > > I'm not on the FX team, but I'd suggest just starting work on it and see > how far you get. You might duplicate some of the research the FX engineers > are doing but you also might not, or you might find yourself being able to > influence the direction of the project with unique input. > > If you can make WebGL work in WebKit, I guess it's not much harder to > expose an eGL binding via JavaFX itself as WebGL is basically eGL for the > web. > > I'd like to see GL support in JavaFX, if only because I enjoy blinging apps > I write, including business apps! The embedded video player is invaluable > for this sort of thing too. > > 1. Why wasn't WebGL support implemented from day zero given that WebKit >> supports it? >> > > I am going to take a stab at these answers based on my relatively poor > understanding of how JavaFX works. Answers worth what you paid for them. > > I'm going to guess that the answer is Windows. > > WebKit drawing is routed via the FX rendering layer, which is in turn an > abstraction over OpenGL and Direct3D on Windows. Mapping OpenGL to Direct3D > is a tricky problem that requires a sophisticated rendering layer. In order > to make WebGL happen, Google had to do a deal with a company called > TransGaming that had developed a translation layer between OpenGL and > Direct3D. That layer is called ANGLE and Google open sourced it once they > had acquired the rights. > > https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle/+/master/README.md > > To support OpenGL in Java, you have two choices: > > 1) Directly expose the operating system underlying OpenGL driver. > > 2) Emulate GL on top of whatever the OS provides. > > Whenever you see OpenGL being used in Java today, the path taken is (1). > The reason browsers use the rather odd and indirect path of number (2) is > that on Windows OpenGL is not the native drawing layer, unlike MacOS and > Linux, games do not typically use OpenGL and as such the GL drivers are > often low quality, low performance and buggy. The GL driver situation is so > poor that it is basically never a good idea to use anything other than > DirectX on Windows. I suspect this is why JavaFX uses a dedicated Direct3D > backend on Windows: > > http://grepcode.com/file/repo1.maven.org/maven2/net.java.openjfx.backport/openjfx-78-backport/1.8.0-ea-b96.1/com/sun/prism/d3d/D3DPipeline.java > > >> 2. Is there some significant technical issue that makes WebGL >> implementation particularly difficult? >> > > Yes. See above. > > >> 3. What is a brief overview of the work that needs to be done? >> > > To expose WebGL, you have to do what Chrome does and map GL to Direct3D > using ANGLE. That's probably a fairly major engineering effort and requires > the complete import of a new open source subsystem into FX. > > Note that if you do this, it'd be silly to restrict it to WebGL in WebView! > You might as well expose a new JavaFX control that implements eGL at the > same time, as a first step towards competing the work. That in turn would > reduce the demand for WebGL because once you can do low level 3D graphics > from Java directly, you don't need to go through WebKit. It'd only be > needed for sites like Maps. > > 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. >> > > See the recent announcement by the lead Java architect that they want to > speed up Java releases. They definitely don't want a 4 year wait for Java > 10: > > https://mreinhold.org/blog/forward-faster > > I'd suggest getting started by exploring ANGLE and reading their > documentation and presentation materials. The path to WebGL or any form of > GL in JavaFX lies through ANGLE. > On 10 Sep 2017, at 02:51, Sten Nordstrom <stnordst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Having done some GL work on windows I've to agree with Mike. Windows GL > drivers can be a disaster. If you are able to specify hardware for your > users it's fine but if you take a random win-machine you are most likely in > trouble. So something like angle would probably be the safest way to get > EGL to work, especially as FX seems to use Direct3D on windows anyway. > > And yes, doing it as Mike proposes one would get an EGL node on the way to > webgl. > > -- Sten
