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Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

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Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#151

Post by errantspark »

fooey wrote: post #98
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.

I don't get it either. Apple graphics support has always been bad and it doesn't seem to have gotten better recently. Blizzard, a company that's always released their games for both Mac and PC, long before Apple even had a particularly relevant userbase was unable/unwilling to put in the effort to release their latest game (Overwatch) on Macs because they weren't able to garner satisfactory performance on Apple hardware.

Some relevant quotes:

“It was a result of not having all the technological support we needed to make the game viable on Mac systems.” says Kaplan, referring to Apple’s policies with OSX. “We have a real love and dedication for Mac players, they’ve been extremely loyal to us and we love giving them Blizzard games.

“But when dealing with the PC, the Xbox One and the PS4 - all of which are extremely welcoming to the technological needs to run a next-generation shooter - in a lot of ways we felt left behind, that we weren’t given the support we needed to make a great product on the Mac.”

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#152

Post by andreyf »

ioquatix wrote: post #105
om2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think what you are going to find is that there is a lot of frustration w.r.t. Apple not supporting Vulkan. One system for everything else and one system for Apple. > 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. Nothing you assert here is invalid. But, I think you've missed the main point, which is that people don't want an e…

> One system for everything else and one system for Apple.

This seems to have worked out pretty well for innovation in the mobile OS market, no?

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#153

Post by [deleted] »

modeless wrote: post #88
om2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Lots of design work needs to be done. So support Vulkan and then let's do the design work! The choice of underlying system API has effects on the design of the upper layers. Your refusal to support Vulkan is blocking progress.

[deleted]

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#154

Post by zbuttram »

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…

What people seem to be missing here is that based on available info it seems Microsoft isn't officially supporting Vulkan either. Sure Nvidia and AMD have released drivers for Windows that have Vulkan support, but we're talking about a web standard that would need to be implemented by browser makers and if Microsoft isn't going to use Vulkan, then what do they implement as the backing for this new standard in Edge? Probably DirectX. I think the idea is to sort out an API that would be compatible between all three due to Microsoft and Apple _both_ not wanting to officially support Vulkan over their own platforms in their browsers, regardless of the support at the OS level.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#156

Post by paulddraper »

saurik wrote: post #115
proyb2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Safari Technical Preview supported 100% ES6? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11708840

Apple definitely keeps up with core JavaScript and CSS support, but essentially anywhere the web undermines their attempt to maintain control over a protocol, file format, or API--or for anything that makes the browser fundamentally more powerful (which undermines their attempt to get developers to focus on native applications, and which stuff like ES6 is fundamentally not an example)--they invest only a token amount…

Have you examples?

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#157

Post by ytugiuyghvk »

Related reading re. Vulkan

"What a WebGL2 successor could look like and why it can’t be WebVulkan" - https://floooh.github.io/2016/08/13/webgl-next.html

See also the the author's sketch of a next-gen web graphics API on top of WebGL (https://floooh.github.io/2016/10/24/altai.html) which is (perhaps unsurprisingl) broadly similar to the sketch given the article (minus command queues, shader libraries, ...).

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#159

Post by sydd »

acqq wrote: post #141
sydd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the next sentence goes "However, there are well defined mechanisms by which IHVs can ship a Vulkan driver on any version of Windows. But it will be as it is the case now with OpenGL. That is, it is up to the application to negotiate with the implementation to install an appropriate Vulkan driver for the hardware that is on the machine." Also "Vulkan is available on all versions of Windows that are on DirectX 12,…

> by all vendors NVIDIA and ATI are hardly "all" vendors I care about. I'm personally not interested in the big desktop PCs. YMMV of course. But I'm personally very against "winner takes it all" and I'd really like some more universal web API, especially one that consumes less power on the iOS devices. Edit: the answer to the question below by sydd: I'm honestly and pragmatically interested in iOS and Apple devices,…

Then which vendors do you care about from the Microsoft ecosystem (which this thread is about)? Vulkan is supported by Nvidia, AMD and Intel, I think this covers >99% of the Windows landscape. Windows phone? or Xbox? Hololens?

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#160

Post by guardiangod »

sydd wrote: post #133
acqq wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not use the one supported by Google, and MS, Vulkan? https://www.lunarg.com/faqs/microsoft-support-vulkan/ "Microsoft has not expressed intent to support Vulkan."

and the next sentence goes "However, there are well defined mechanisms by which IHVs can ship a Vulkan driver on any version of Windows. But it will be as it is the case now with OpenGL. That is, it is up to the application to negotiate with the implementation to install an appropriate Vulkan driver for the hardware that is on the machine." Also "Vulkan is available on all versions of Windows that are on DirectX 12,…

Someone else mentioned that they don't care about Nvidia and AMD both advocating for Vulkan because I'm personally not interested in the big desktop PCs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Compatibility

In addition to Nvidia and AMD, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Qualcomm (!!!), and ARM support Vulkan. Hardware wise, there is absolutely no problem whatsoever.

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