Mozilla Is Getting Excited About WebGL 2

While the WebGL 2.0 specification hasn't been finalized yet, Mozilla is already hard at work on ensuring Firefox fully supports this next accelerated graphics standard for the web.

WebGL 2.0 is based on OpenGL ES 3.0 where as WebGL 1.0 was derived from OpenGL ES 2.0. There's been draft specifications of WebGL 2.0 for a while now and as such Mozilla has been getting ready their preview support for the next standard, which they announced yesterday on the Mozilla blog.

Martin Best of Mozilla wrote, "Today, we’re introducing a preview of WebGL 2, which is still under development by the WebGL working group. WebGL 2 is based on OpenGL ES 3.0, and brings with it many improvements and additions to help developers create stunning visuals on the Web. WebGL 2 will raise many restrictions and add new capabilities compared to WebGL 1. For example, while WebGL 1 only required support for being able to render using 8 textures at a time, WebGL 2 raises this minimum limit to 32."

Mozilla has worked with Unity in particular for initial WebGL 2.0 support adapted from their OpenGL ES 3.0 render target. Unity 5.0 was announced yesterday with the initial WebGL export support.

Other changes with WebGL 2.0 include support for sampler objects, multiple render targets, multi-sampled render buffers, 3D textures, uniform buffer objects, sync objects, transform feedback, and much more over the initial release of the Web Graphics Library debut from 2011. After being in development for quite a long time, WebGL 2.0 should be officially released this year.