Congrats to the Google Maps team on deploying your WebGL enabled version of desktop Google Maps. This is a pretty cool use of WebGL. WebGL lets you have hardware accelerated 3D in your browser without requiring installation of an additional browser plugin. Pretty cool, huh? WebGL is basically a javascript interface to OpenGL ES, which lets your javascript have direct access to your graphics hardware. It's still javascript, so you have the expected performance hit of running javascript, but it can work well for some applications (like Google Maps!).
If you aren't familiar with OpenGL ES, it's the open 3D standard done by the Khronos Standards group, and it's also the 3D api of choice for iOS and Android. Sweetness.
This is also a great milestone for the WebGL community to see their standard being used by Google Maps.
I played with it in Chrome, and it functions fairly well. I like being able to rotate around things, and zooming down to street level. Given the power of WebGL, the Google Maps team has a fun time ahead of them as they code in new features.
I'm keeping an eye on the WebGL middleware communities. Javascript programmers aren't going to want to code directly in WebGL, so there are lots of middleware sprouting up everywhere.
Fun!
