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2
Mozilla’s Implementation
of WebGL
Benoit Jacob, Jeff Gilbert, and Vladimir Vukicevic
2.1 Introduction
A typical implementation of WebGL in a browser has to implement this API on top of
systemgraphics APIs such as OpenGL, OpenGL ES, or Direct3D. us, WebGL is eectively
an additional layer on top of OpenGL or other similar APIs, potentially adding overhead.
Some understanding of what kind of work takes place in a browser’s WebGL implementa-
tionmay help application developers write better code that suers from less overhead.
Figure 2.1 gives a general overview of Mozilla’s WebGL implementation. Over the
course of this chapter, we will touch ...