Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Quick WebGL Test

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer


I quickly played with ASUS’s Eee Pad Transformer TF101, the one based on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processor (dual core CPU). The operating system is Android 3.2.1 (kernel 2.6.36.3 android@Mercury #1).

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer

Actually what I wanted to test is the 3D side and especially WebGL. With online WebGL tools like Shader Toy or GLSL Sandbox, you can now code your pixel shaders nearly from everywhere…

First thing, you must install a browser that supports WebGL because the default one does not support it:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer

I installed Firefox (I really don’t appreciate all these OSes that require your account (here gmail) just to install an app like firefox or the flash player!). Okay, let’s forget that point and let’s see the cool stuff, I mean WebGL.

I first tested this WebGL blob demo:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

Sounds cool, but if you look a closer bit, the rendering is pixelated, and the framerate is very very low (few FPS):

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

Okay let’s try to modify the pixel shader :

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

Ooops! Let’s try vertically:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test


It’s a bit better. But without arrow keys, it’s really hard to position the mouse cursor on a particular line of code, like changing the values of a vec4. No enough precision! I guess you have to forget live coding at the train station unless you have the keyboard dock… 😀

Second test, this pixel shader:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test



Obviously, someone, among Tegra 2 or Firefox for Android, does not like raymarching. The correct rendering with Firefox / Win7 is:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test, GLSL Sandbox

After this first test, I launched Shader Toy in oder to have some framerate numbers. Here is the default demo of Shader Toy:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

And here is the FPS:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test



On a real PC, you easily reach 200 FPS or more. Same thing for the Plasma demo:

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, WebGL test

Conclusion: ouf, the test is over! I’m happy to return on my PC for serious coding 😉 I’m curious to repeat these WebGL tests with ASUS’s Prime…




Related posts:

  1. Live Code your Shaders with GLSL Sandbox (WebGL)
  2. WebGL Caps Viewer 0.1.0: Simple WebGL Test and Capabilities Viewer
  3. Raytraced Water Simulation (WebGL)
  4. Edit OpenGL ES 2.0 Shaders on your Android Device
  5. (WebGL) How to Enable Native OpenGL in your Browser (Windows)

7 thoughts on “Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Quick WebGL Test”

  2. JeGX Post Author

    Thanks for the link, it should be the default keyboard on Android, or at least it should be present as an option.

  5. wagster

    I’ve been trying to run Stage3D on the EEEpc. The framerate is not good – mind you it’s software mode only.

    Does WebGL have the same software/hardware mode issues that Stage3D does?

  6. DrBalthar

    Conclusion: Tablets suck and Tegra2-based tablets suck even more.

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