SceneJS vs Three.JS vs others [closed]
As SceneJS author I thought I'd throw this in if it helps: SceneJS is specialised towards fast rendering of large numbers of individually articulated objects, without game engine effects like shadows, reflections etc.
In other words it's aimed at requirements of CAD, medical anatomy, engineering visualisations, things with 1000's of nuts and bolts, organs etc.
It therefore has less flexibility than three.js, GLGE and PhiloGL.
It does however have a pure JSON API, which people have found integrates well with AJAX, parsers and databases (eg CouchDB).
So if you're writing a game I would point you at one of the other frameworks, but if you're writing a CAD viewer then SceneJS might do the trick.
I often use the popularity of a project on GitHub as an indicator of its success. While there are problems with this method, I do find it's often the best way to make a choice. Listing popular WebGL projects, in decreasing popularity by number of "stars":
This also mirrors what I've found when looking into these projects. three.js seems to be the most feature complete, has an extensive set of examples, a well-structured code base, and a thriving community.
This is basically a duplicate of WebGL Framework, but the answers have probably changed since then. See also Which WebGL framework should i learn?
Since the world of WebGL is developing so fast right now, it would be difficult to find a complete, up-to-date comparison of WebGL frameworks. As soon as somebody spent the time researching such a thing, it would be obsolete. But here is an annotated list of WebGL frameworks:
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/User_Contributions
If you start a project using one of these frameworks, and then if you update this list based on your experience, it will be more up to date than before.
By the way in looking just now at PhiloGL, I was impressed with the full set of API docs, and that they've ported all the WebGL lessons to use PhiloGL (source code only, no explanatory text). I don't see a tutorial per se; but they have several examples, so overall they're better off than three.js in regard to documentation.
A few more notes, for those who may come after (including myself):
- CopperLicht seems to major on loading models from files, as opposed to generating geometry in code. It is not open source.
- PhiloGL uses O3D for generating geometry, e.g. spheres.
- Three.js comes with commonly-used textures.