Ok so if it is using canvas directly why bother calling it WebGL and why does it not run on some machine on Linux based on availability of certain graphics drivers?
If it was based on canvas and using that directly I would expect it to be an add-on library that takes a 3D scene for example and translates it to a 2D canvas commands.
Because it's using the graphics card to convert the 3D instructions into 2D equivalents in real-time. You can't calculate that stuff ahead of time if you want to allow the user to manipulate the canvas. And the whole reason we have graphics cards in the first place is because doing that on the CPU is too slow.
Well I've seen some demos and games of people using a 2D canvas to show a 3D scene.
Back in the day computers didn't have 3D accelerated cards, it was all done on the CPU and there were enough 3D games that ran on them.
I can also see canvas API extended to have 3D operations on it.
It just seems WebGL is (was?) popular, lots of demos, but I still haven't seen too many industry uses of it and I have heard people at work claim "it is dead". So I was just wondering, ok, if it is dead is there any hope of having 3D accelerated graphics in the browser or is there something else replacing it.
* It seems a sibling comment answered my question:
If it was based on canvas and using that directly I would expect it to be an add-on library that takes a 3D scene for example and translates it to a 2D canvas commands.
It seems it is doing more than that though...