3D in HTML5 vs Silverlight

Question

I'm wondering about the 3D capabilities of HTML5 versus those of Silverlight. Someone was telling me that Internet Explorer 9 and the next version of Chrome will both feature GPU acceleration. How will this compare to say, the capabilities of Silverlight?

I know Unity is a great 3D engine, but would it be possible to render reasonably complex shapes (i.e. a human model from Poser) in Silverlight or natively in the next generation of browsers?

Finally, how far off is this new revolution? Will we see GPU acceleration in web browsers by the end of the year?

Please excuse my total ignorance in this area. Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure all the major browsers will support GPU acceleration in the near future. Silverlight only supports some basic hardware acceleration scenarios at the moment. It's possible to cache UI elements on the graphics card and perform 2.5 transformations (transform 2D planes perspectively).

Silverlight has to catch up with HTML 5 on its tail. Hardware accelerated 3D support is my top feature request for the next versions of Silverlight. I'm not alone with this wish, this feature request is the 3rd at http://silverlight.mswish.net

Today, we have a cool 3D engine for Silverlight out there called Balder. It does software rendering at the moment, but Einar (main developer) will surely implement GPU support when Silverlight catches up. Balder supports 3D model formats. See the sample browser here.