Here, a big list of really astonishing WebGL demos

http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/

There are many points that just stand out.

-it loads super fast
-no plugins required (unlike Unity, Flash or Java). Basically everyone with a modern browser can
see the media
-has great 3D tech (I especially like the rendered Head) http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/webgl_materials_bumpmap_skin.html
-no weird and distracting confirmation Popup
-works on all major platforms PC, Tablets, Mac and Linux (ok, not shure about Mac)


Is JS + WebGl the better playground for Indy games?

If you have some projects on your homepage, you can show
them off instantly. Wich is much more user friendly than
a download or requiring some weird Unity plugin hassle.

Im shure there will be exporters for WebGL from engines like
Unity in the future, to also cover the
development environment.


An additional advantage is, that it is naturally running online.
This makes it not a stretch to require a registered login when
selling the game and reuiering user authorisation.
With binding part of the gamelogic online to a server, it also has a very good
copy protection.

The biggest problem I see with WebGL is the security implications it has. Especially since it doesn't require a button click to start, so you just have to surf to the wrong site.

The demos are quiet nice, indeed. Though, I ran the really well done http://www.chaostoperfection.com/ - walkthrough and it stutters on my machine for whatever reasons. So it was not that convincing at all for that tech.

What I find disturbing is this "I run in the webbrowser" attitude which has sort of a non-immersive nature. Even though you have this great tech, as long as I see a surrounding website, or, a surrounding browser.. it feels not complete. It is more a gadget to a website. It feels not like a game. A game should always run fullscreen (in my opinion). Maybe this is highly subjective but I always think when a game has "additional clutter" to it it feels weak.

http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-full-screen-api/
they are working on a fullscreen api.

i like webgl.

i think the graphics part is totally ok already for non-highend games but javascript still is a bit slow for running a real physics engine.

i think a proper audio api (to enable stuff like pitch shifting) still is in the works too.



edit:
http://steffe.se/?p=677
i find this project interesting. the automatic conversions of c++ physics engines like bullet all seem to be quite slow so far.

The rendering calls are basically just passed to the hardware and WebGL is based on the OpenGL ES 2.0 specifications, which is really nice and allows for all common rendering techniques and around the same speed as it would have outside the browser.
The big problem however is, as ventilator already pointed out the javascript performance. Too many calls to the WebGL API will cause the gpu to wait for the cpu, which is a common problem, but will be much worse with javascript compared to native compiled code. Also already basic gameplay will be quite slow if you don´t carefully optimize everything. Then there are the browser differences: when it runs at acceptable speed in chrome, it will probably be unplayable in firefox, as javascript in chrome is a lot faster (but still nowhere close to native code).

WebGL works in most Android browsers (with extremely slow javascript), on Linux, Windows and OSX. It also works in iAds on iOS, but so far is not supported in Safari on iOS. WebGL is only really supported in Chrome and Firefox, while Internet Explorer doesn´t and the others have it in some kind of experimental state or something.

good support for this will be important too:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/pointerlock/intro/

Really nice and solid Quake3 rendering.

Even fullscreen and captured mouse.

I think if there are some killer apps out using WebGL in
a larger scale, the browsers will have to adjust to a full support.

That IE does not support WebGL is not a big problem. The target
group (gamers) will have no problem switching to Chrome or FF.

Business Sites will follow to implement WebGL multimedia if the market share of IE is
low enough in their target group.