New Chrome update brings pointer lock

Chrome

If you ever played a 3D games from your browser, like Quake Live or BananaBread 3D, you already know that the biggest problem in doing this is, of course, the mouse pointer going over the edge of the browser screen and leaving you in a stupid situation where you can’t control your in-game pointer for those few moments until you bring the mouse back on the game. Now Google has finally launched an update to fix this issue. The Pointer Lock API restricts the mouse movement inside of the app (game) window making it possible to play browser games like you do with standard games on your PC.

However this issue was not only present in browser FPS games, as Google stated “Medical and scientific visualization, training, simulation, modeling, authoring packages” will also make good use of this API.  You can try it with the games I already mentioned:  BananaBread3D or Quake Live. However this was not the only thing that was updated, Google also added some improvements for Windows 8 users and said that they will continue to make Retina users experience on their browser even better.
quake-live

Beside the updates Google also awarded hackers that found security issues in their browser. Their usual prizes range from $500 to $2000, and they officially stated that they have paid over $1million dollars to programmers that found those exploits and bug. So Chrome now looks like a lot of fun, you can either play FPS games without wondering if your mouse pointer will slide over the edge of window, or if you prefer coding more, you can give it a shot and try finding vulnerabilities in it. Maybe if you find out some critical security flaw; you will get higher prizes like some programmers did when they were paid $5,000 and $10,000, sounds tempting doesn’t it.

[Ed – Although Google has their bounty on exploits and bugs many hackers do not submit to them as they have to give over the entire exploit to earn the money. Instead they will enter competitions that are not funded by Google so that they can keep some of their prized methods. We have seen during the Pwn2Own contest where participants gave the final exploit but could maintain control over sandbox breakouts and other key parts to their methods. This means that even with the bounties there are likely security flaws that are still present in Chrome. As we have said; there is no such thing as a secure browser, OS, or application.]

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