Google, Mozilla want to turbocharge 3D games in your browser

The Mozilla Foundation introduced
a technology this week that it
claims will allow game makers to
supercharge the performance of
their wares in a Web browser.
The technology is a highly-
optimized version of JavaScript,
called asm.js, that Mozilla says
will turbo charge a developer's
code in a browser and enable them
to deliver visually compelling 3D
games on the Web.
The technology also opens the
door for developers to bring 3D
games to browsers on mobile
devices that perform almost as
well as those written in a
programming language, the
company wrote on The Mozilla
Blog.
Mozilla added that it is working
with gaming heavyweights Disney,
EA, and Zeptolab to bring versions
of those players' Web games to
mobile in an optimized form.
In conjunction with the turbo
JavaScript announcement. Mozilla
said it's teaming up with Epic
Games to bring that company's
Unreal Engine 3 to the Web.
Mozilla hard at work
Mozilla has been working diligently
to prove that the Web can be a
dazzling platform for 3D games.
For example, with the release of
Firefox 18 in January, the
foundation introduced
BananaBread
, a 3D Web game with a bundle of
leading edge Web technologies
under the hood--HTML5, WebGL,
and asm.js.
Meanwhile, a Google programmer
hopped on the asm.js bandwagon,
maintaining the technology ought
to be supported by the V8
JavaScript engine in the Chrome
browser.
"Optimizations should be added to
V8 to generate good code for the
asm.js subset of JavaScript,"
Kenneth Russell wrote in a Chrome
issues posting.
"The implementation cost should
be small compared to the potential
upside--the ability to run
significant existing code bases
with close to the speed of C inside
the JavaScript engine," he wrote.
If Google gets onboard with
asm.js--even though the
technology may compete with
some of the Search Giant's
initiatives in the space, such as
Native Client and Portable Native
Client--it would be very significant
for developers.
What will make browsers viable for
3D games
In order for Web browsers to
become a viable platform for high-
performance 3D games,
technologies that allow them to do
that must be adopted by all the
major browser makers. Otherwise,
developers will be stuck making
games for individual browsers--
not an attractive proposition for
them.
It remains to be seen, however, if
Google will follow the advice of
Russell. Mozilla's asm.js promises
to perpetuate the life of JavaScript,
something Google would clearly
like to see go away, as its efforts
to popularize a technology called
Dart indicates.
Dart, introduced more than a year
ago, is a Web programming
language designed to address the
shortcomings of JavaScript and
eventually replace it.