April 28th was the first WebGL Meetup here in the Bay area with a great mix of industry titans to garage developers. Managed by the Khronos group, WebGL is a web-based graphics library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

Web3D veteran and fellow Meetup co-organizer Tony Parisi introduced Neil Trevett, President of Khronos & VP Mobile Content at NVIDIA, who presented on ‘What is WebGL?’

Henrik Bennetsen gave a product demonstration on OurBricks. Built on WebGL, OurBricks lets you discover, interact with, and share 3D content right in your browser. Think of it as a 3D warehouse where you can freely examine the model and much more. A great site for 3D modelers that want to share their work with others. A proper write up on OurBricks will be coming soon, but do check out their website and the video below.

Closing demonstrations came from Kenneth Russell, software engineer at Google working on support for WebGL and related 3D graphics technologies in the Chrome browser. Kenneth shared a variety of WebGL demos from this site.

Kenneth shared the example in the video below to which a member of the audience responded, “that is my demo!” Yes, Aleksandar Rodic was in the house to explain his amazing looking demo. Check it out with a WebGL enabled browser here.

Visiting scholar from Denmark Ates Gursimsek had this nice write up.  For those interested in WebGL in the SF/Bay area, join the meetup group and see you at the next event.