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Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

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Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#91

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #67
om2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not complaining, we're explaining the lay of the land. Working on top of all three of these APIs is totally doable and will result in a better API for the web. Things worth noting: - We believe other browser vendors agree with us that the web API should work on all three of the major native APIs. - The web has security requirements which force us to go a bit higher-level than Vulkan anyway. I understand your de…

The optics are just really bad. Apple could say "In the mean time we'll support Vulkan" and bam! there is a cross platform solution. Instead you say "We will generously let everyone implement our specifications, we hate to see everyone suffering so, but if everyone else works really hard to do what we say, things will be great!"

[deleted]

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

hota_mazi wrote: post #74
om2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not complaining, we're explaining the lay of the land. Working on top of all three of these APIs is totally doable and will result in a better API for the web. Things worth noting: - We believe other browser vendors agree with us that the web API should work on all three of the major native APIs. - The web has security requirements which force us to go a bit higher-level than Vulkan anyway. I understand your de…

> I understand your desire to have Vulkan on Apple platforms, but it's really a separate issue from the right target for WebGPU. No, it's not a separate issue. If Apple supported Vulcan, the simple act of proposing this new API as a standard would be laughed out of the room. We can only speculate why Apple won't support Vulcan but I'm going to go with "Prefer a solution they designed themselves over one designed by o…

I'm sure Microsoft has an interest in a 3D web API working on top of D3D, even if NVIDIA and AMDS are putting out Vulkan drivers for the platform (Microsoft is not supporting Vulkan themselves as far as I can tell).

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#93

Post by hota_mazi »

om2 wrote: post #79
hota_mazi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand your desire to have Vulkan on Apple platforms, but it's really a separate issue from the right target for WebGPU. No, it's not a separate issue. If Apple supported Vulcan, the simple act of proposing this new API as a standard would be laughed out of the room. We can only speculate why Apple won't support Vulcan but I'm going to go with "Prefer a solution they designed themselves over one designed by o…

I think you are wrong on that. Vulkan is a low-level native API, not a JavaScript API for the web. Lots of design work needs to be done. In addition, even on platforms where there are unofficial Vulkan drivers (such as Windows), it's likely the natively available API will still have more complete support and better performance. So either way, we need a cross-platform graphics API. Let's focus this discussion on impro…

I understand and see some merit to your angle, but at the end of the day, I don't think Apple will be taken seriously in that area until they support Vulkan.

Go ahead and do that, then we can talk about going up the stack and judging the API you're proposing (and let's be honest, it's really Metal-for-Javascript).

Show some good will.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#94

Post by om2 »

surfmike wrote: post #71

How is this on security? Vulkan API is built on being able to modify command buffers and pass parameters by directly writing to memory, rather than the client/server model of OpenGL. I could see that being an issue with the sandboxed model of the browser. Disclaimer: haven't read the new Apple web 3D spec, just curious about others' opinions.

We haven't yet solved all the security problems, but we're aware of and thinking about them.

We expect threadsafety, memory safety, data validation, and memory protection for the shader language to be the big issues.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#96

Post by tinus_hn »

whyileft wrote: post #40
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... what? Deceptive... really? Come on now. http://caniuse.com/ In terms of tracked features they're ahead of Edge with both their stable release and in development (TP) builds. Don't let your own prejudices distort reality.

http://caniuse.com/#feat=notifications Every. single. other. browser. Including desktop Safari.

Except all the mobile browsers. Which makes sense since nobody wants notifications on their phone from a website.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#97

Post by stupidcar »

shmerl wrote: post #35
stupidcar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The group's draft charter[1] proposes that contributing organisations would be required to agree to the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement[2], which includes a patent licensing commitment for all essential claims. So, if a specification came out of this, then it would not be patent encumbered; at least not by any patents held by Apple. I'm willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this. Like any big…

> So, if a specification came out of this, then it would not be patent encumbered; at least not by any patents held by Apple. So how come they didn't manage to have the same idea for touch events? > Everyone supporting Vulcan would be nice, but a standardised, patent-free, cross-platform, web-enabled, low-level GPU API would still be a major step forward. I'd say design and its roots matter. If they base it off Metal…

> So how come they didn't manage to have the same idea for touch events?

I have no clue. You'd have to ask them. But they have had this idea for WebGPU. If you think it's better than what they did for touch events, let's hope you approach it with an open mind and-...

> I'd say design and its roots matter. If they base it off Metal, and use Metal like technology, while Metal itself remains a closed Apple only API, then W3C should reject it.

...No, you're just going to get mad about a hypothetical.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#98

Post by fooey »

NickGerleman wrote: post #9

"The major platform technologies in this space are Direct3D 12 from Microsoft, Metal from Apple, and Vulkan from the Khronos Group. While these technologies have similar design concepts, unfortunately none are available across all platforms." So Apple, the only company not supporting Vulkan on their platforms, is complaining that there isn't a cross-platform solution?

I don't know why Apple thinks they're going to have any sway over the people working on 3D graphics. Their hardware support for 3d graphics has been so awful for so long, I have a hard time imagining there's a very big user base they can leverage to get their way. So far as I can tell, what Apple wants here is almost completely irrelevant to the industry.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#99

Post by saurik »

pygy_ wrote: post #70
JoshTriplett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I expect Vulkan was designed with the expectation of process-level isolation being the end-all of security concerns. That's not sufficient for single-process, multi-tab browsers. Chrome has process isolation, and Firefox is developing process isolation right now. I don't think it makes sense for a new technology stack to go out of its way to support single-process multi-tab browsers.

But even in chrome, several tabs can share the same process, which means that information can be leaked, cross-tab.

You say "can", but unless you have a very small number of tabs, the correct phrase is "many tabs share the same process". I am currently averaging 10 tabs per process.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#100

Post by obl »

kristofferR wrote: post #61
om2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not complaining, we're explaining the lay of the land. Working on top of all three of these APIs is totally doable and will result in a better API for the web. Things worth noting: - We believe other browser vendors agree with us that the web API should work on all three of the major native APIs. - The web has security requirements which force us to go a bit higher-level than Vulkan anyway. I understand your de…

Why is DirectX support needed? Isn't Vulkan supported on the same platforms as DirectX anyway?

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