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Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

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Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#391

Post by threeseed »

shmerl wrote: post #371
stephenr wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't you want to do it? Are you fucking serious? The web is always being trumpeted as "works everywhere". But now you want to tie the web to specific GPU drivers? > Same can happen when you install some non Web application that requires it (games?) You can use the web on a lot of devices that you can't install local applications on. > I don't see how Web or non Web makes any difference Perhaps you should lo…

> The web is always being trumpeted as "works everywhere". This isn't just "The Web". It's a Web interface for intense graphics usage. Expecting it to work if the user doesn't have working drivers is beyond silly. > You can use the web on a lot of devices that you can't install local applications on. And that doesn't mean you have full capabilities there. If user has no control, and vendor doesn't care to keep it up…

You seem to be wanting to expose the messed up world that is high end PC gaming to the rest of the web. That is quite delusional and I would be thrilled to have Apple standing up for ordinary users in fighting any such move.

The aim of the web is to just work and then as a lower priority work well.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#392

Post by shmerl »

stephenr wrote: post #389
shmerl wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you are talking about cases of drivers not being up to date. The reason it's relevant, is because all these new APIs including Vulkan are relatively new. So even if hardware has such capabilities, drivers for it can be lacking because user didn't keep the system / drivers up to date. I don't see how browser makers can fix that, besides warning users that their drivers are too old. As time goes on, this will…

> I assume you are talking about cases of drivers not being up to date. No, I'm talking about users even having the unofficial vulkan-supporting drivers installed (on Windows). Users aren't going to suddenly get Vulkan support in a driver update from Windows/Microsoft Update. > I don't see how browser makers can fix that, besides warning users that their drivers are too old. Try to read this carefully, I've mentioned…

> Users aren't going to suddenly get Vulkan support in a driver update from Windows/Microsoft Update.

They aren't likely to get updates for DX either, let's say if they are using Windows 7. They won't get DX12, right? So again, there isn't anything browser makers can do about cases of outdated drivers, besides warning the user (if they rely on such drivers). If users can fix that (by updating drivers / system), good. If not, users can skip those applications.

> Try to read this carefully, I've mentioned it several times: The point of this WG is to provide an API layer on top of a range of low-level GPU libraries.

Yes. This assumes 1. those libraries are installed, and 2. they have certain minimal required capabilities. And browser makers have no control over it. Only user has (or in worse cases - vendor, if the system is all locked up). So it's only a natural thing to expect, for browsers to warn the user, if minimal requirements aren't met (in whatever way).

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#393

Post by shmerl »

threeseed wrote: post #391
shmerl wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The web is always being trumpeted as "works everywhere". This isn't just "The Web". It's a Web interface for intense graphics usage. Expecting it to work if the user doesn't have working drivers is beyond silly. > You can use the web on a lot of devices that you can't install local applications on. And that doesn't mean you have full capabilities there. If user has no control, and vendor doesn't care to keep it up…

You seem to be wanting to expose the messed up world that is high end PC gaming to the rest of the web. That is quite delusional and I would be thrilled to have Apple standing up for ordinary users in fighting any such move. The aim of the web is to just work and then as a lower priority work well.

Gaming has nothing to do with the cause of the mess. The mess stems from the likes of MS and Apple not supporting common cross platform APIs. There is no one but them to blame for that.

Apple want to stand up for the user and fix it? Let them support Vulkan. Oh, wait... They don't really want to.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#394

Post by threeseed »

jgord wrote: post #191

Now that Apple has all power and wealth, they arrogantly push an api nobody wants, resulting in man-centuries of wasted effort and frustration .. instead of listening to their users [ in this case developers ] We have seen this before - fortunately no matter how much money they put behind this bad idea, the internet is larger than apple, and open standard apis and choice will eventually win. I don't want an apple api…

And yet Apple is proposing creating a fast, open, standards complaint Javascript API.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#395

Post by eridius »

esrauch wrote: post #308
eridius wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. I get the feeling you didn't really read the blog post. This proposed standard is supposed to be able to be implemented on top of all 3 platform-specific APIs, it's not made specifically for Metal. Yes, they're using the Metal Shading Language in this initial proposal. But in the blog post they explicitly say that the choice of the shading language is likely to be contentious (or, as they put it, "fun"),…

While I'm far less negative about this blog post than most of the other commentators seem to be, the part where you cite seems more like "well yeah, we're proposing Metal, and that's obviously going to be contentious so lets sheepishly point out that again this is all subject to negotiation". My interpretation might be too uncharitable, or yours might be too charitable by taking it at face value, it's pretty difficul…

The blog post explicitly says they're choosing to "defer the issue". That seems very clear to me as saying "we're not seriously proposing the Metal Shading Language, this is just a placeholder for the purposes of writing up this proposal, we'll let the standardization process decide on the actual language".

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#396

Post by eddieh »

zamalek wrote: post #390
eddieh wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question seems rhetorical, but here are my thoughts anyway... This is the new normal, coinciding with the death of expertise. The WebKit developers clearly are not working in a vacuum, if one bothers to read the blog post: > Our proposal has been received positively by our colleagues at other browser engines, GPU vendors, and framework developers. Not to mention that the WebKit developers are pretty much the for…

> WebKit developers are pretty much the forefathers of all modern web tech. IE4 was the forefather of modern web tech[1]. > They erroneously conclude that WebGL's successor must also be a Vulkan based solution. [...] All of which is is essentially the tech version of "libtard" based arguments. No, people are sick of working against 3 different APIs. One of which is a standard. It's Microsoft doing their own thing wit…

Except, as I quoted, the GPU experts and the other browser vendors are onboard with this. This isn't Apple going at it alone like MS did. You're reenforcing my point. Thank you for that.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#397

Post by ioquatix »

Rusky wrote: post #227
ioquatix wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are pretty subjective assertions. Do you have any evidence to back that up?

There's nothing subjective about it. Take a look at the APIs, they operate at the same level and are designed around the same principles. As for past driver quality, ask a graphics developer doing anything more complicated than a toy weekend project. OpenGL drivers are inconsistent and buggy.

> Just because it was designed to be high-performance doesn't mean it automatically wins on platform support and implementation quality.

I never asserted that. I didn't even qualify what I meant by "BEST". But, let's evaluate the qualities you mention:

> platform support

Vulkan objectively wins here, supporting Windows 7/8/10, Linux, macOS/iOS with a wrapper, Android, etc. Intel has unofficial drivers for their x86 iGPU. Qualcomm recently announced hardware support, along with ARM.

> implementation quality

Vulkan is developed as an open specification, and has a full conformance test for implementations (https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/adopters/). Many aspects of Vulkan are available on GitHub and you can submit PRs. In my experience, drivers on Linux are very good and there are frequent updates. We currently deploy Vulkan at scale in production and haven't had a single issue with reliability.

In addition, the Vulkan validation layers assist with development because they check almost all API invariants and log incorrect usage. This helps to develop programs that work correctly according to the specs.

So, from the driver stack to the client software, Vulkan, IMHO, has a quality and well thought out implementation.

In comparison to DX12, which is developed behind closed doors, we don't know the implementation quality.

I personally haven't heard about any major bugs in Vulkan drivers, but I have seen quite few DX12 demos plagued by bugs. That's my subjective opinion though.

> Direct3D 12 is at the same level as Vulkan

Vulkan is better than DX12 in terms of openness, conformance testing, development tools, platform support, etc. Performance is about the same.

Even Valve agrees: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov...

> OpenGL drivers are inconsistent and buggy.

Agreed :)

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#398

Post by ioquatix »

xenadu02 wrote: post #248
ioquatix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Vulkan is not suitable for exposure directly to the web. Full stop. Therefore your posts are off-topic.

Do you even know how Vulkan works?

The driver API exposes a layered stack. It's trivial to add a validation layer between the driver and the client. It's SO much better than existing OpenGL or DirectX driver models for this one reason alone.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#399

Post by Tagbert »

nicc wrote: post #149

Apple proposing standards is ridiculous. They only care about standards when they're basically forced to adopt/support them, or they're their own. These are the same guys that: - use lightning instead of mini USB - removed the headphone jack - are creating yet another proprietary connector for accessories - don't allow their OS on third-party hardware - only allow developing for iOS from macOS - only allow apps on iO…

Apple’s “new” UAC port wasn’t made by Apple, and it isn’t new https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/02/no-apple-isnt-developi...

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#400

Post by kabes »

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…

You wanna focus this discussion on improving the web platform? Great, start with finally shipping WebRTC.
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