3D graphics in a web browser will soon be a plugin-free, open standard. Online 3D games, 3D social networking and 3D product previews are just some of the types of web content that could benefit from hardware accelerated 3D graphics.

The Khronos Group, the body responsible for overseeing the OpenGL graphics standard, announced yesterday that they have developed a draft standard for bringing hardware accelerated 3D graphics to the web.

Working with Mozilla, the body has proposed a mechanism to allow java script to access the OpenGL graphics interface from within a browser to display web content in 3D. The proposed standard is being termed WebGL, with developer test versions already having been endorsed by Mozilla, Apple and Google for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome respectively.

The WebGL draft spec is now open for testing and comments.