Quake II Gets Ported to Your HTML5 Web Browser
I still remember playing Quake II with my awesome 12MB Voodoo 2 in SLI. Now all you need is a modern browser. Sigh.
There's been a recent surge in HTML5 development thanks in large part to Apple not supporting Flash for its iPad.
A group working at Google decided to devote their 20 percent time to making a version of Quake II that's playable through an HTML5-compatible browser without the need for a plugin.
Google's Chris Ramsdale wrote in a blog post:
We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. You can see the results in the video above -- we were honestly a bit surprised when we saw it pushing over 30 frames per second on our laptops (your mileage may vary)!
It's still early days for WebGL, so you won't be able to run it without a bleeding edge browser, but if you'd like to check out the code and give it a whirl yourself, you can find it here. Enjoy!
While we've seen more impressive efforts from a browser through id Software's Quake Live, it requires a special custom plugin. This work from Google showing off HTML5 bypasses the need for custom software and plays it through right into Safari or Chrome. Sadly, Firefox doesn't support the necessary HTML5 required for this tech demo.

Plainly put, Mozilla still hasn't clarified if they will incorporate HTML5 H.264 video now that the licensing fees have been postponed until, at least, 2015. It's a double-edged sword, because if the companies that have the patent decide otherwise when 2015 arrives, then Mozilla either finds a way to make it financially viable to buy the license, or they will effectively have to "downgrade" the browser in the next version.
It's a tough call, but what ultimately come out of this could also say a lot about the future of open-source software, especially because Firefox is the most recognized piece of open source software in the world.
And Opera still hasn't said a word either. And all other minor browsers will be left in the dark too. If this happens it will be a battle between IE, Safari and Chrome... not a good prospect...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/
Or you could go to the provided blog link in the story and get the link there.
I hope they port capture the flag for quake2 as well.
Why can't we just browse the web in a browser? and play games on the PC or console?
I don't know how long HTML5 has been around but I agree that the resource hogging advertisement platform known as Flash sucks and needs to go. I love Firefox Flashblock.
it's just a proof of concept with what html5/webgl can do, it was easier to do because some of the work was done for them already (from an existing port of the quake 2 engine to java) you can't expect a ton of work writing something from scratch to show off the in-working version of some standards, heck, this is more than what you typically see for a poof-of-concept, it's a full, working game (even if an old one)
Open GL was dropped by M$ on purpose to push their proprietary piece of crap, Direct X and to kill Linux gaming.