It's easy to talk trash on a technology that is in its infancy. Wait... WebGL games are still not as good as game engines that have been developed for 20 years? SHOCKER.
The technology is only going to get better. The whole point of these demo's is to show what is possible even now when the specs aren't finalized and the technology is barely adopted. Give it 3-5 years and I would be willing to bet you'll need to eat your words.
> Wait... WebGL games are still not as good as game engines that have been developed for 20 years? SHOCKER.
That's the point, isn't it? We already have all these fast, battle-tested game engines Heck, we have 15-year-old game engines that run on the browser (or do Flash games no longer count?). Is it really worth it to toss all that out and switch to WebGL?
Is it worth replacing a proprietary plugin (which the owner may stop supporting at any time) with an open standard (which has guaranteed continued development)? Yes, I believe it is.
Used to think that when I was high on WebGL in summer 2011. Sure some progress was made since then but really not as much as I expected. I really thought "by 2013 this will run on ALL browsers and on MOST mobile devices out-of-box, no config flags needed". We're still not there yet by a long shot.
So you're saying it'll be another 3-5 years? That's cool by me, I'll check back in 3-5 years then. This stuff is easy enough to pick up for anyone who has a grasp on basic modern OpenGL workings anyway..
I think there are two different points which kind of render the comparison difficult to make:
- html5 games are defacto multiplatforms, since tbey must support all the popular browsers, and underlying systems (mobiles, tablets, PCs...). Compare this with the Wintel supremacy of early RTS days,
- This is technology preview material, available to a potentially very large audience. I don't think RTS did get such exposure during their development, especially during the eary days, when people wanted to disclose as little as possible to the listening competition in the gaming news channels (nainly magazines).
The technology is only going to get better. The whole point of these demo's is to show what is possible even now when the specs aren't finalized and the technology is barely adopted. Give it 3-5 years and I would be willing to bet you'll need to eat your words.