Hi! I'm Nicolas and I'm interested in information visualization, JavaScript and web standards.
I currently work as a Data Visualization Scientist at Twitter. I wrote PhiloGL, the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit and V8-GL.
V8-GL
Posted in:
v8-gl
, opengl
I've been doing a couple of changes to the JavaScript InfoVis Tookit lately, which I'll describe in some other post, but most important I've been working on a new project I'm really excited about that's called V8-GL.
What's V8-GL?
[V8-GL](http://github.com/philogb/v8-gl/tree/master#readme) intends to provide a high-level JavaScript API for creating 2D/3D hardware accelerated desktop graphics.
In other words, you can hack some JavaScript code that opens a desktop window and renders some 3D hardware accelerated graphics. Bindings are made using the V8 JavaScript engine.
Example
I wrote a small example that animates a rotating Icosahedron. This example uses timers, colors and lighting among other things://Add array iteration method
Array.prototype.each = function(f) {
var len = this.length;
for ( var i = 0; i < len; i++) f(this[i]);
};
//Initializes 3D rendering
function initRendering() {
"DEPTH_TEST COLOR_MATERIAL LIGHTING LIGHT0 NORMALIZE COLOR_MATERIAL"
.split(" ").each(function(elem) {
Gl.Enable(Gl[elem]);
});
}
//angle variable
var angle = 0;
//Draws the 3D scene
function drawScene() {
//Set global color and drawing properties
Gl.Clear(Gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | Gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
Gl.MatrixMode(Gl.MODELVIEW);
Gl.LoadIdentity();
Gl.Translatef(0.0, 0.0, -5.0);
//Set diffuse and positioned lights
Gl.LightModelfv(Gl.LIGHT_MODEL_AMBIENT, [0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 1.0]);
Gl.Lightfv(Gl.LIGHT0, Gl.DIFFUSE, [0.4, 0.4, 0.4, 1.0]);
Gl.Lightfv(Gl.LIGHT0, Gl.POSITION, [5.0, 5.0, 5.0, 1.0]);
//Rotate and plot Icosahedron
Gl.Rotatef(angle, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
Gl.Color3f(0.5, 0.0, 0.8);
Glut.SolidIcosahedron(2.5);
//Render
Glut.SwapBuffers();
}
(function() {
//Initialize Glut
Glut.Init();
Glut.InitDisplayMode(Glut.DOUBLE | Glut.RGB | Glut.DEPTH);
Glut.InitWindowSize(400, 400); //Set the window size
//Create the window
Glut.CreateWindow("OpenGL on V8 baby!");
initRendering();
//Set drawing callback
Glut.DisplayFunc(drawScene);
//Set resize window callback
Glut.ReshapeFunc(function(w, h) {
var gl = { 'Viewport': [0, 0, w, h], 'MatrixMode': [Gl.PROJECTION], 'LoadIdentity': [] };
for (var i in gl) Gl[i].apply(this, gl[i]);
Glu.Perspective(45.0, w / h, 1.0, 200.0);
});
//Set timeout callback
Glut.TimerFunc(25, function() {
angle += 2.0;
if (angle > 360) angle -= 360;
Glut.PostRedisplay();
Glut.TimerFunc(25, arguments.callee, 0);
}, 0);
//Start the main loop.
Glut.MainLoop();
})();