Silverlight.WebGL

Sliverlight.WebGL is a C#/.NET wrapper for in-browser access to WebGL functionality using Silverlight 5.

Features

Create 3D web browser applications using Silverlight plugin on Windows and Mac OSX.
Easily port existing WebGL JavaScript code to Silverlight.
Enable C# developers to put cross platform 3D applications in a web browser.

Restrictions

Cannot use as a Silverlight Control and mix with other Silverlight controls.
Cannot hide Silverlight control, it must be visible somewhere even if only 1x1 pixels.
Cannot be used for out-of-browser 3D applications.
Cannot show file:// URL based textures in IE9 or Chrome, but Firefox works OK.

How it works

The HTML5 canvas has a WebGL context on recent releases of Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and it can be faked on Internet Explorer with a plugin. The Silverlight HTML Bridge allows typesafe wrappers to be created around this JavaScript API so your application/game loop can be written and compiled in C#/VB.NET with the 3D being fully hardware accelerated
by the WebGL support in the browser.

Here's an example WebGL called from the C# wrapper:

public void clearColor(GLclampf red, GLclampf green, GLclampf blue, GLclampf alpha) {
    Invoke("clearColor", red, green, blue, alpha);
}

Getting Started

Install the Runtime and Developer Requirements
Download the latest source code from Silverlight-WebGL from GitHub. On Windows I used TortoiseGit following these instuctions.
Open up the solution file LearningWebGL/LearningWebGL.sln in Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (it's free).
Press Start Debugging (F5).

Edit App.xaml.cs and change Lesson03 in this method to select a different lesson to view:

  private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {
      this.RootVisual = new Canvas();
      new Lesson03() { Id = "Lesson" };
  }

Runtime Requirements

Silverlight 5
WebGL enabled browser:
- Internet Explorer via IEWebGL (tested in IE9 32-bit)
- Firefox (tested in 10.0.2)
- Chrome (tested in 17.0.963.79 m)
- Safari on OSX (not tested yet)

Developer Requirements

Licenses

The source code for Silverlight.WebGL is released under the MIT License.
The source code for the LearningWebGL samples is ported from the original JavaScript WebGL samples on the Learning WebGL website which is largely based on the Nehe OpenGL Tutorials samples.
The source code for GlMatrix is ported from the original JavaScript gl-matrix.js library by Brandon Jones.
The iPhone graphic used in the sample pages is taken from openclipart.org by Ben Bois.
The Silverlight.js file is the standard script from Microsoft.
The WebGLHelper.js file is from IEWebGL to allow loading of their plugin for internet explorer, or the built-in WebGL if it's available.

TODO:

Fill in missing implementations of WebGL methods.
Port the remaining samples from Learning WebGL.
Test on Mac OSX in Safari, Chrome and Firefox and add browser matrix to this README.md file.

Arlorean/Silverlight-WebGL