QUESTION: What is WebGL?

WebGL technology is a low-level programming interface for JavaScript that allows for high-performance interactive 3D and 2D graphics rendering directly within the window of any modern web browser. The main advantage of WebGL is its ability to leverage hardware acceleration from the graphics processor of a computer or mobile device, which provides colossal performance and allows for processing complex polygonal meshes, millions of vertices, and heavy visual effects in real time.

To start working with this technology, a developer creates a standard canvas element on the page and then requests a graphics context from it by calling the canvas.getContext('webgl') method or its more modern version, webgl2. Unlike the familiar 2D context, WebGL requires a fundamentally different approach to programming. The basis of its operation is shaders — special mini-programs that are compiled directly on the graphics card and written in a specialized programming language called GLSL. Vertex shaders are responsible for transforming the coordinates of three-dimensional points into 2D screen projections, while pixel or fragment shaders determine the exact color of each individual pixel taking into account lighting, shadows, and textures.

Since writing pure WebGL code requires deep knowledge of mathematics, linear algebra, and memory buffer management, developers often use popular wrapper libraries like Three.js in practice. This library significantly simplifies the work: it takes care of the routine of creating scenes, cameras, light sources, and loading 3D models, turning a complex low-level process into concise and understandable JavaScript code. Due to this, WebGL is actively used to create interactive 3D tours, product presentations, virtual museums, and cutting-edge web games.