Porting an opengl app to browsers

Question

What is the most common way to port an application so it can run on browsers?

I've always thought that you need to make an ActiveX component for this, but when I saw cooliris (cooliris.com), it seems that there must be a better way to do this. Does anyone know?

Answer 1

The cooliris widget thing is done in Flash. And I think they use something like Adobe AIR to convert it to a desktop app.

Answer 2

Yes, use WebGL. It isn't much mature yet, but it promises a lot!

Answer 3

The three possible options I'm aware of have been stated ...

• WebGL
  • Hardware accelerated
  • Just Great
  • Code is quite similar to standard C++
  • Won't work for at least one year, and what about IE ?
• Adobe AIR or competitors
  • Generates desktop or browser app from the same code, it's just a recompilation away
  • No hardware 3D, you'll have to use either a software rasterizer with very few polygons (100 max) or/and clever tricks
• Specialized plug-in
  • Requires a different plug-in for each supported brower : and ActiveX component for IE, a plug-in for FF, another for Chrome... and support for different versions...
  • May share most of the code with the desktop app (only the "bridge" is specialized)