← All ideas
  • Published 29 Oct 2017

Chrome native client (for Chrome OS)

Chromebook users especially have no video editor or decent 3D software.

In theory it should be relatively easy to compile Blender as a Chrome native client PNaCl . This would allow Blender to be really to install on actually any platform running Chrome.

See for example the feature request on Redit Chrome OS

50%

Development Status: Open

Upvote 1 Downvote 1
werner
29 Oct 2017

7 Comments

corey

Note that NaCL for non-ChromeOS is deprecated and will be removed . These days, the better solution would be WebAssembly (wasm). But all the limitations of WebGL apply, etc. Wasm would let it run in ~any (recent) browser, not just Chrome, and Chrome Apps don't expose any APIs that would be useful for Blender. I'm concerned about how well a typical chromebook could run Blender, but then again, BI renders 10000x faster today than 7 years ago on same hardware.

jason

Why would it be easy?

To my knowledge, Chrome OS doesn't support full OpenGL. Blender's entire interface is in OpenGL.

After Blender 2.8 is complete, it may be possible to port Blender to the more limited OpenGL profile used on Chromebooks, but doing so before that would be... non-trivial.

werner Author

Chrome OS should support Open GL. I'm not aware of any limitation there and for example OpenGL games and web apps works (e.g. Android games, Google Maps Earth, WebGL...)

jason

There are different kinds of OpenGL. For instance, Chrome OS uses OpenGL ES 2.0. Blender is currently using Open GL 1.2 (I think) and after the 2.8 release, will likely be using OpenGL 3.0. While there's a reasonably straight-forward path to port from OpenGL 3.0 to OpenGL ES 2.0, it's not just the flip of a switch.

werner Author

I see WebGL 2.0 based on Open GL 3.0 ES to be working. It seems to be that having Blender compatible as a Chrome app would make it really easy to install and enable a huge platform. I could look if someone external would be willing to help with some coding but it would require some contact familiar with the code.

jason

OpenGL ES and OpenGL are not the same thing.

Like I said, if this is to be possible at all, it must be after 2.8 is released.

1
werner Author

Sounds like a possible Google summer of code project then (depending on 2.8 release date).