Over the past year or so, my contributions to Google Chrome have
mostly been behind the scenes: improving our base libraries, security, stability, and
performance. But recently, I made an addition to Chrome Experiments, a site we just launched
today. With the Monster experiment I had a chance to step back from
working deep within Google Chrome's C++ code, and give my right brain a little exercise.
Since web browsers don't currently support native 3D graphics, the
basis for my experiment is a custom 3D rendering engine written in JavaScript. It uses some
pretty intense numerical computations to project the 3D shapes into a 2D image, like your eye
would. These are then drawn to the screen using the HTML5 canvas element. This process is a
similar concept to early 3D game engines, before accelerating graphics cards handled the
work.
JavaScript wasn't originally designed with intensive mathematical
computation in mind; the real trick is not in writing the engine, but making it perform well
in the high-level language running in your browser.
Compared to
creating the 3D model beforehand and embedding the data in the application, Monster creates
the mesh using software algorithms in real time while the demo runs. This has some nice
advantages like decreasing download time, but it requires even more processing power to draw
every frame.
Here's what it looks like in action:
The demo
starts with a simple cube, but as it progresses, the cube is smoothed and pulled apart to
become exponentially more complex. The values used in these operations are varied over time,
creating an animation that brings the monster to life. Anytime during the demo you can hit 'p'
to pause, and explore the scene with your mouse. With a bit of careful programming
(ok, a lot) and the performance of V8, it's possible to do all this work
and still generate smooth and consistent graphics.
So give it a try and
take a look through the other Chrome Experiments on the Google Chrome Blog. If you've made something interesting with
JavaScript please submit it, too. We'll be highlighting more experiments and
holding sessions Google Chrome at Google I/O on May 27 - 28 in San Francisco.
