Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#411

Post by unsigner » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:25 AM UTC

"Only platforms without Vulkan are Apple's" is most certainly NOT true. The Xbox One is a widely available platform for which a lot of 3D effort is invested, and rewards this effort really well - much better than other platforms (like desktop Linux or old versions of Windows) that are frequently thrown around as arguments for "Vulkan everywhere".

It is a common observation among game developers who have really tried both that Metal is a much more accessible API than Vulkan; "90% of the performance for 10% of the effort".

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#412

Post by jolux » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:29 AM UTC

vvanders wrote: post #295

JoshTriplett wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a memory bottleneck. (That may be GPU memory or system memory, depending on the architecture of your graphics stack.) That's not the same as a GPU processing bottleneck. You can have a bottleneck in GPU processing, or a bottleneck in getting enough data to the GPU.

Oh I see, we're getting pedantic over semantics. If your GPU is designed with a small bus between system and GPU memory, that's still a GPU issue. You could make the same argument on the CPU side for caches and DRAM if you want to go that far. I appreciate the education lesson but I think you'll find most graphics programmers will consider it a GPU problem :). At the end of the day though here's the thing. The inters…

>You can't polyfill(otherwise why use the GPU in the first place?) on the users don't have a cutting edge machine so you're going to have a swath of people that your WebApp won't work for.

I'm pretty sure you just argued in favor of creating a new API instead of using Vulkan...

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#413

Post by corysama » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:30 AM UTC

ioquatix wrote: post #409

corysama wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: Isn't a big focus of web tech the goal of supporting multiple backends for everything? If a new platform wants to support WebGPU but not Vulkan (ex: XBone or PS4) it should be not just theoretically possible, but actively supported by the design of the Web spec.

Good point. But, that's assuming that it's not possible to write a wrapper on top of DX (for Xbone) that proves a Vulkan API. It's already been shown to be possible to do something similar, with MoltenVK. The ball would be in Microsoft's court for this one.

"it should be not just theoretically possible, but actively supported by the design of the Web spec."

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#414

Post by _ph_ » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:33 AM UTC

For all arguing "to use Vulcan": the API proposed is a high-level API which could be implemented on top of Vulcan. Or any other lowlevel API like DirectX or Metal.

When designing an API, you have to take the characteristics of the calling language into respect. Especially when you are trying to achieve the highest possible performance. You can define highlevel APIs, which try to minimize the amount of computation in the calling language, or a more lowlevel API, which gives only very basic operations, and the client has to implement more logic themselves.

When targeting "fast" languages like C/C++ you tend to design more lowlevel APIs, assuming that the client can implement abstractions more efficiently as they are more tuned to his needs. When targeting slower languages, you want to do more computation in the API.

So for designing a new Web API, you both have to consider that Javascript is slower than compiled C and on top of that, you have to consider security requirements. Your API should not create an attack vector to your device. This means, the best Web API would be an abstraction on top of the native low level API and the only question with respect to those would be: can the proposed API be implemented well and efficient on e.g. Vulcan?

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#415

Post by ioquatix » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:36 AM UTC

pharrington wrote: post #129

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…

You say Vulkan drivers will, for the forseeable future, be of lower quality than D3D12 drivers and lack official support. Lets assume I blindly accept this faith-based argument. WebGPU than, must be implemented on top of D3D12 and Metal, two already very different APIs. What, than, makes a hypothetical WebVulkan unfeasible in contrast to WebGPU?

Keep in mind that DX12 doesn't support Windows 7 or 8, so that cuts out a significant portion of the existing market.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#416

Post by stymaar » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:39 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #251

modeless wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple allows you to provide an alternative API on OSX I'll need a source for this claim considering that no driver-level Vulkan implementations are available on macOS.

No. Provide a source that Apple actively prevents it. Developers can ask users for their admin password, sudo to root and largely do whatever they want including adding kernel extensions and drivers.

> sudo to root and largely do whatever they want

Not anymore, even being root doesn't give you total control now[1], and custom kernel extensions are among the things that are prohibited.

This «feature» bas been introduced in El Capitan for «security reason».

[1] System Integrity Protection : System Integrity Protection

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#417

Post by ioquatix » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:40 AM UTC

om2 wrote: post #83

yellowapple wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're not complaining, we're explaining the lay of the land." The "lay of the land" is that the rest of the world is adopting Vulkan, and therefore the right target for WebGPU is very obviously Vulkan. Even macOS and iOS can (theoretically) support it thanks to MoltenVK [0], and Vulkan is already available on Windows. Trying to wrap all three "major" native APIs is pointless when there's already one that works every…

Vulkan on Windows is all based on unofficial drivers that don't come with Windows and aren't supported by MS. We don't think it's right to depend on this even if it's theoretically possible. Likewise for unofficial macOS/iOS drivers.

> We don't think it's right to depend on this even if it's theoretically possible.

Care to elaborate on that?

In the worst case, someone could implement Vulkan on top of the "supported" API. Or, the OS developers could get with the times and ship a modern, functional system?

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#418

Post by ioquatix » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:43 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #310

21 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA/AMD drivers with Vulkan support pass through WHQL, which is as official as a 3rd party driver can get. So calling them unsupported/unofficial is quite a stretch.

Does WHQL actually include any Vulcan tests? The driver may be officially certified but is the featur in question?

What's probably more relevant is that those drivers pass the Vulkan conformance tests.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#419

Post by jolux » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:47 AM UTC

Why exactly are we laying it on thick against Apple here when they have the support of other browser vendors in proposing this and are trying to fix a legitimate problem? All of the comments seem to be "well wouldn't it be nice if they used WebVulkan instead" when WebVulkan doesn't fucking exist. If it were so obviously superior why isn't it in the pipeline already? Apple is not the only company that can propose standards, if there was really such an immense appetite for WebVulkan I think it would already have been proposed!

This doesn't even touch the reasons it hasn't been, and the most important of these for me is security. "Well yes, it's extremely low level and admittedly very dangerous, but we can make it secure enough to expose to the most hostile environment in the history of computing" is how we ended up in the mess we are in right now security wise. You want a secure system, you have to build it that way from the start preferably in languages that don't let you decapitate yourself like Rust. I'm pretty sure it's a consensus that it's impossible to write secure C code these days, so why is everyone so convinced we could sufficiently harden a low level graphics API for web use? This is like if when NetScape proposed JavaScript if everyone went "well you're just trying to dominate it, we already have C89 just put that in the browser." Fucking NO. When are we as an industry and a discipline going to learn our lesson with this "code first, secure later" crap?

And again, if this could be done and it's such a great idea, why is this the first proposal and not actual WebVulkan? The argument here is not WebVulkan vs WebGPU because again WebVulkan does not fucking exist. When or if it does, perhaps we can argue about why Apple won't support it if they don't, but until then, you're shooting down one attempt at a standard API with a hypothetical thing that does not exist and which a lot of experts in the field seem to think is a bad idea from several angles.

I will reiterate this one last time because it seems like everyone has missed this: there is currently no cross-platform solution for next-gen web graphics except for this proposal. Put up or shut up.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#420

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 7:50 AM UTC

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?

You are forgetting Sony and Microsoft.