Before you get excited about the above title, let me state that this is NOT a Maxis project, nor EA.  It’s actually Mozilla’s FireFox (an upcoming version).  They have implemented a new feature called “WebGL” which aims to bring 3D graphics to internet browsing!  This is a very interesting concept – they’ve shown a preview of a Spore Creature exported to Collada format!  Here’s how it works, straight from ARS Technica:

In a follow-up post featured at the Mozilla Hacks website, he shows how WebGL can be used to display a COLLADA model. Specifically, he uses a critter exported from the popular video game Spore. His demo displays the 3D model in a Canvas element and allows the user to rotate by clicking and dragging. A quick glance at the page source code provides some insight into how WebGL works. In the sporeview.js file, Canvas event listeners detect when the user clicks and moves the mouse so that the model can be rotate as the user drags. The Spore model, which is in the XML-based COLLADA format, is loaded with an XMLHttpRequest in the SporeFile.js script. The OpenGL shader language is used inside of HTML script tags that are referenced by ID in the JavaScript code. It’s fascinating to see how the underlying concepts of OpenGL programming have been adapted for the Web.

I hope Maxis is looking into this.  Not sure how much strain it’ll put on their servers…but this would make browsing the Sporepedia more enjoyable (unless you are on a 56K connection – then you are screwed!)

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