WebGL Drink at SIGGRAPH 2015

Join us in LA for an informal gathering to talk about WebGL.

Eric Haines, some of the WebGL Insights contributors, and I invite you to join us at the bar at Hotel Figueroa on Saturday, August 8, at 8pm. Come by, have a drink (cash bar), and talk WebGL with us!

Hotel Figueroa
939 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015

The bar is all the way in the back next the pool.

For questions, tweet to @pointinpolygon or @pjcozzi.

WebGL Insights book signing at SIGGRAPH 2015

Please join us at SIGGRAPH 2015 to celebrate the release of WebGL Insights.

The book signing will be Tuesday, August 11, 3:00-4:00pm at the CRC Press booth (Booth 528). Come meet many of the WebGL Insights contributors and talk WebGL.

WebGL Insights was a huge undertaking created by 42 contributors and 25 technical reviewers. I owe a big thanks to everyone involved for making this happen, and a special thanks to Christophe Riccio for creating the original OpenGL Insights with me.

Come celebrate with us at the book signing!

If you won't be at SIGGRAPH, use promo code FZP46 on the CRC Press website by August 31, 2015 to get the conference price of $55.00.

New Sample OpenGL Insights Chapters

To celebrate the call for authors for WebGL Insights, the kind folks at CRC Press joined us in releasing two more chapters from OpenGL Insights for free!

• Chapter 30. WebGL Models: End-to-End by Won Chun
• Chapter 36. Browser Graphics Analysis and Optimization by Chris Dirks and Omar A. Rodriguez

In Chapter 30, Won explains the full pipeline for compressing geometry for WebGL based on his experience working on Google Body in the early days of WebGL. In Chapter 36, Chris and Omar explain how to use D3D tools to debug WebGL apps on Windows.

Check out the main OpenGL Insights website for five more free chapters. If you are a WebGL developer, also consider submitting a chapter proposal. They are due October 19, 2014.

Why Contribute to WebGL Insights

To expand on the recently announced call for authors for WebGL Insights, I've put together some reasons to contribute a chapter. I imagine these apply to all books of this style, they are from our experience with OpenGL Insights.

1. Share and gain knowledge

Perhaps the most prominent reason to contribute is to share knowledge with the WebGL developer community. It's satisfying to help other developers and writing helps us gain a clearer and deeper understanding of our topic. Every time I write or teach, I come away with a better understanding. I hope everyone will have the same experience with WebGL Insights.

2. Push forward the state-of-the-art

Although WebGL Insights is not intended to be a collection of research articles, I believe it will represent the state-of-the-art of what is being done with WebGL. Contributing to this helps move the community forward as we build on prior work.

3. Meet people

In OpenGL Insights, we built a fantastic contributor community during the writing and editing process. I expect the same to happen with WebGL Insights. Once we finish our draft chapters for WebGL Insights, they will be made available to all contributors for technical review. This, of course, improves the quality of our chapters, but is also a great way to meet other developers.

When WebGL Insights is released at SIGGRAPH, we'll have a book signing at the CRC Press booth where all contributors are invited to sign books. This was a lot of fun for OpenGL Insights.

4. Get feedback on your work

In addition to peer-reviews from other contributors, we invite external reviewers to provide feedback on our work. I will also review all chapters. In OpenGL Insights, each chapter enjoyed 2-7 reviews.

5. Get into writing

In my experience, writing an entire book is a nearly full-time year-long project. Writing a chapter for WebGL Insights will probably take two weeks full-time including revising based on reviewer feedback and reviewing final proofs after the publisher does copyediting and layout. Contributing to WebGL Insights is a low commitment way to see what it is like to write a book with a publisher, and an opportunity to build a relationship with one.

6. Exposure and credibility

If you need to convince your employer that contributing to WebGL Insights is in their best interest, it is worth mentioning to them that it will provide exposure for their project. For example, if your WebGL engine has a nice post-processing framework and you write a chapter about the design details, developers may start looking at your engine as leading the way in post-processing. In addition, a WebGL Insights chapter comes with credibility since proposals and chapters are peer-reviewed.

7. Fun

All of these reasons make WebGL Insights a fun project to contribute to. Sharing knowledge is fun. The sense of pushing forward the state-of-the-art is fun. Meeting people is fun. It's all fun.

Compensation - I'm often asked if there is any compensation. This isn't a big motivating reason to contribute, but there is compensation. Contributors receive royalties by splitting a percentage of the publisher's net receipts, e.g., what the book sells to Amazon for, not what Amazon charges. It's some money but not a ton. Many employers will also let contributors write their chapter during work hours.

Check out the call for authors. Even if you don't want to submit a proposal, I appreciate your help spreading the word.

WebGL Insights: Call for Authors

It is with great enthusiasm that we invite you to contribute to WebGL Insights, a book to be written by the WebGL community that will contain original articles on intermediate and advanced WebGL techniques. WebGL Insights will be published by CRC Press for SIGGRAPH 2015.

We invite proposals from hardware vendors, browser developers, WebGL-engine developers, application developers, researchers, educators, and others with WebGL experiences they want to share. Proposals that address any aspect of WebGL development are welcome, including:

• WebGL performance best practices, such as managing framebuffers, uniforms, textures, vertex buffers, and vertex formats
• WebGL extensions, such as multiple render targets, instancing, etc.
• Debugging, profiling, and testing tools and techniques
• App Development
  • 3D engine design, e.g., design of Three.js, Babylon.js, PlayCanvas, etc.
  • WebGL app case studies across all domains, including games, geospatial, medical, data visualization, and advertising
  • Migrating from Flash to WebGL
  • Migrating from OpenGL / OpenGL ES to WebGL
  • Emscripten and asm.js
  • WebGL for VR
• WebGL on mobile
  • Platform-specific performance best practices
  • Cross-platform mobile and desktop development
  • Techniques for low-power usage
• WebGL implementations
  • Browser implementation details
  • ANGLE implementation details
  • Graphics driver implementation details
  • GLSL compilers and optimization details
  • Desktop and mobile GPU architecture
  • GPU-specific performance advice: NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Imagination Technologies, ARM, Qualcomm, etc.
• Assets
  • WebGL-optimized assets, such as mesh compression, texture compression, streaming massive models, etc.
  • Content pipelines and tools for WebGL engines
• Web Development
  • High-performance JavaScript techniques
  • JavaScript best practices for large projects
  • Web workers and other APIs commonly used in WebGL projects
• Rendering algorithms using WebGL
• Graphics research using WebGL
• Teaching with WebGL
• WebCL
• WebGL history and evolution
• Business models built on WebGL

Please don't feel limited to these topics; we welcome proposals on all aspects of WebGL development.

Timeline:

• October 19, 2014: Authors selected. Start of 6-week writing period
• November 30, 2014: Articles due. Start of 6-week review period
• January 11, 2015: Revised articles due
• August, 2015: Book released at SIGGRAPH

Please send proposals to pjcozzi@siggraph.org by October 19. We will accept proposals before October 19 on a rolling basis. Use this example proposal as a template.

Proposals should include the article title, your name and affiliation, a one-page abstract, screenshots, and references. Strong proposals will demonstrate real-world WebGL experience and writing ability. Proposals can have multiple authors, and a single author can submit multiple proposals. Most articles should be 10-15 pages.

Please feel free to contact us for additional discussion. We're looking forward to putting together a valuable book for the WebGL community.

Final thought: When Christophe Riccio and I started OpenGL Insights three and a half years ago, the WebGL community was just forming. I am happy to be part of a community that has such momentum and is accomplishing so much. WebGL Insights will be a celebration of our accomplishments and a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in WebGL. I look forward to WebGL Insights becoming a book series that captures the highlights of the WebGL community as we grow. I hope you will consider contributing.

Thanks,
Patrick Cozzi, Editor for WebGL Insights