Virtual Texturing with WebGL

Abstract

Until recently, achieveing hardware accelerated 3D content on web sites have only been accessible through third party plugins. The new HTML5 standard eliminates this restriction by adding native 3D rendering through the WebGL API. This technology brings established desktop applications online, bridging the gap between software platforms. This thesis investigates how to implement Virtual Texturing for web browsers using WebGL and how to maintain high performance. Virtual Texturing is a recent approach to texture mapping that enables support for theoretically infinite image dimensions. In this thesis, Virtual Texturing is implemented with the help of several elements new to the HTML5 specification, such as Web Workers and Web Sockets. The thesis provides an introduction to the required browser features, an overview of relevant WebGL features,as well as a performance analysis. Results show that Virtual Texturing in WebGL is a viable approach for websites with high resource demands.