The latest nightly build of WebKit provides anti-aliasing for WebGL rendered scenes. Anti-aliasing makes edges look smooth and allows objects to blend together and move without looking jagged. Molecules in the 3D ChemDoodle Web Components now look fantastic and animations are smoother than ever. The following image shows the difference between the rendering of a compound with anti-aliasing disabled (left) vs. enabled (right); click on the image to see the comparison clearly. We put together a neat demo webpage with just a MolGrabber3D component as a nice way to search the PubChem database for structures and render them in 3D.
UPDATE: (3/18) It appears that a few bugs were discovered corresponding to the implementation of anti-aliasing in WebKit, so the feature has been temporarily reverted. We should see anti-aliasing reimplemented as soon as they solve those issues.
UPDATE: (4/1) The latest WebKit update has WebGL anti-aliasing reimplemented!
Anti-aliasing Comparison, click to see full size
Expect Mozilla MineField and Google Chrome to match this functionality soon.
We continue to work on the next developments for the ChemDoodle Web Components, and we will have more information after ChemDoodle 3 is released. For more information on WebGL and the 3D ChemDoodle Web Components, please read this article published at MacResearch.