Simon Willison’s Weblog

How Wolfenstein 5k works

I linked to the 5k entry Wolfenstein 5K the other day. Lee Semel, the author of the entry, has written an article describing how the impressive Javascript first person shooter works. The principle method used is the dynamic creation of XBM images using a 3D graphics technique known as raycasting (described in this tutorial). The author incorrectly states that Mozilla does not have the capacity to render XBMs—Wolfenstein 5K runs just fine in my version of Mozilla so I presume support has been added since he last tested it.