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ThreeBrowserDroid

README.md

ThreeBrowserDroid

Android port of the ThreeBrowser host. This is a separate Android Studio project, not an Android skin around the WinForms executable.

Current milestone

  • Android WebView browser with URL/search navigation, history, reload, and home.
  • A real C++ OpenGL ES 3 renderer owning an Android Surface through JNI.
  • Surface attach/detach, resize, pause/resume, and shutdown are serialized so that rotation, backgrounding, and navigation do not retain a dead ANativeWindow.
  • Native mode intercepts recognized three.js core entry points and serves the repository's shared three-native compatibility slices through an Android host-object adapter.
  • A bounded JNI command submission entry point accepts the same 8 MiB command ring used by desktop ThreeBrowser.
  • arm64-v8a and emulator x86_64 builds.

The Android renderer begins with the scene/camera/geometry/material/mesh command subset. Advanced textures, skinning, PMREM, WebGPU and Vulkan remain desktop-only.

Architecture

Android WebView (stock websites)
       | JavascriptInterface / byte[]
       v
JNI command boundary (C++20)
       |
       v
ANativeWindow + EGL + OpenGL ES 3

Android requires a small managed Activity to host WebView; rendering and native resource ownership live in C++. The Windows-only WebView2 COM and HWND parenting code is intentionally not copied.

Build

Open this directory in Android Studio, install SDK 37, NDK, and CMake 3.22.1, then run the app configuration. From a terminal with an Android SDK configured:

./gradlew assembleDebug

On Windows use gradlew.bat assembleDebug. The project wrapper uses Gradle 9.4.1; AGP installs its pinned CMake and default NDK packages when their SDK licenses have already been accepted. A successful debug build writes app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

Porting sequence

Completed in the first vertical slice:

  1. Android ANativeWindow/EGL lifecycle independent of GLFW and HWND.
  2. Android host-object adapter and three.js request interception.
  3. Shared desktop JavaScript command producer feeding a native GLES decoder.
  4. WebView/native-surface composition with browser touch handling retained.
  5. Built-in page that can be compared between Web and Native modes.

Next parity layers are textures and material maps, more geometry/object opcodes, lighting, instancing, and loaders. Sandbox storage can then move to app-private files/Storage Access Framework. The offline model harness should come later because desktop Ollama is not available as a loopback service on a normal Android device.