PhiloGL version 1.1.0

PhiloGL version 1.1.0 has been released! This version includes a couple of new features like improved WebGL detection, linear fog, picking, added primitives like Cylinder and Cone and some bug fixes with directional lighting.

Better hasWebGL

Until now WebGL was currently detected via the existence of the WebGLRenderingContext object in the window object. This check is good to see if the browser we’re using provides access to the WebGL API, but doesn’t really check whether the hardware is capable to render WebGL - or at least create a WebGL rendering context.

In other words, we could have Firefox 4 installed on a ventilation system and get true for the check of !!window.WebGLRenderingContext.

In order to go a little further on the check I transformed hasWebGL into a static method that checks whether the WebGLRenderingContext exists but also checks whether the 3D context can be created. This is a noticeable step forward to check for WebGL capable machines. It’s worth a small API change (from static property to static method). You can check the documentation for this method here.

Picking

Picking is the ability to interact with 3D objects in the scene via events like mouseenter or click. Picking can be used by setting pick to true in the events configuration for the PhiloGL constructor. Internally the Event object uses the Scene pick method.

For example:

//Create App
    PhiloGL('surface-explorer-canvas', {
      events: {
        //enable picking
        picking: true,
        //now the model is returned as the target of
        //the event.
        onMouseEnter: function(e, model) {
          model.uniforms.colorUfm = [1, 1, 1, 1];
        },
        onMouseLeave: function(e, model) {
          model.uniforms.colorUfm = [0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1];
        }
      },
      onError: function() {
        alert("There was an error while creating the WebGL application");
      },
      onLoad: function(app) {
        /* do stuff with app */
      }
    });

Fog

Linear fog was added in version 1.0.2, but only now it’s official. Fog can be selected as a scene effect in the configuration object. You can find more information about how to configure linear fog here.

Primitives

I added Cone and Cylinder as new primitives. You can find documentation about them here.

Mini Demo

I made a video featuring fog, picking and our new primitives. In this particular example I only set cones and spheres as pickable objects.

I hope you enjoy the new features :) You can download the library here.