Question on Camera Permissions

On the call today there was a discussion regarding the means for 
handling camera data and making it available to a developer of browser 
code. I presume that for an AR (browser) application the camera 
(preferably environment) is on and composited into the display along 
with elements provided by the web page.

The discussion centered on the levels of permission that might be 
defined. The list included

 1. Straight to display (not available to JavaScript)
 2. Available to JavaScript
 3. Camera + mesh available to JavaScript

At some point in the device's GPU the video stream must be composited 
with the computer rendered elements. From what I have read (not done) of 
WebGL, it should be possible to read the composited pixels from the 
GPU's frame buffer and return them to JavaScript.

There may be a restriction built into WebGL that prevents reading a 
frame buffer that is not created by that JavaScript context. If this is 
true, then the read operation would return the generated elements + 
transparent pixels and I don't think there is a problem.

-- 
*Leonard Daly*
3D Systems Architect & Cloud Consultant
President, Daly Realism - /Creating the Future/