This proposal makes much more sense than Apples "Metal Only" solution (https://webkit.org/blog/7380/next-generation-3d-graphics-on-...). I liked Metal at the beginning but over time it turned out that it is just another OpenGL/DX flavor with the same old driver/performance problems. Also using SPIR as IL allows the use of the preferred shader language. WebGL Next is about parallelism and abstraction, otherwise there would be absolutely no benefit.
3D Portability Initiative
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#22This sounds like a response to Apple's WebGPU initiative?[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593272
The emulation cost for non Apple Systems would be enormous to implement this solution (= SLOW). SPIR could be used native on most devices.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#23Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site.
There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting.
Here, go shoot some zombies.
http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island
That's about as good as it gets.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#24Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site. There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting. Here, go shoot some zombies. http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island That's about as good as it gets.
Google maps doesn't work without WebGL, and some other map related websites like mappilary.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#25Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site. There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting. Here, go shoot some zombies. http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island That's about as good as it gets.
Google maps doesn't work without WebGL, and some other map related websites like mappilary.
Right, but the proposal is about an API which lets web applications do shader-language stuff beyond the level of WebGL. Is this really necessary?
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#26This proposal makes much more sense than Apples "Metal Only" solution ( https://webkit.org/blog/7380/next-generation-3d-graphics-on-... ). I liked Metal at the beginning but over time it turned out that it is just another OpenGL/DX flavor with the same old driver/performance problems. Also using SPIR as IL allows the use of the preferred shader language. WebGL Next is about parallelism and abstraction, otherwise ther…
Can you comment a bit more on the limitations of Metal?
I've been spending the last few days reading through the docs and learning how to use Metal. So, I'm curious what you (and anyone else, I guess) perceive its shortcomings to be.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#27Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site. There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting. Here, go shoot some zombies. http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island That's about as good as it gets.
Same was said about sound, Javascript, web video, and pretty much any addition on top of basic markup.
I think future web will be better and/or can consume less power when sites have more direct control of rendering.
Emphasis on power usage -- I think they (= browser vendors) should give a lot of consideration how to enable developers to save power. Web rendering is already mainly done on GPUs anyways, but there's opportunity to push less pixels to achieve the same results as the current rendering methods. Pushing less pixels equals less power. Of course passive power savings (from developers' point of view) are also good.
WebGL must also not perceptibly increase page load times, a few milliseconds is acceptable.
If the features turn out to be useful, when reliable WebGL is ubiquitous, various javascript libraries will start to use it and number of sites using WebGL will increase rapidly.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#28Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site. There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting. Here, go shoot some zombies. http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island That's about as good as it gets.
Same was said about sound, Javascript, web video, and pretty much any addition on top of basic markup. I think future web will be better and/or can consume less power when sites have more direct control of rendering. Emphasis on power usage -- I think they (= browser vendors) should give a lot of consideration how to enable developers to save power. Web rendering is already mainly done on GPUs anyways, but there's op…
WebGL must also not perceptibly increase page load times, a few milliseconds is acceptable.
Almost every non-trivial WebGL page I've seen shows a "Loading" message for some period of time.
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#29Who needs a "next generation WebGL?" It's hard to find an interesting or useful WebGL site. There are plenty of demos and ads, but few sites worth visiting. Here, go shoot some zombies. http://www.y8.com/games/abandoned_island That's about as good as it gets.
Google maps doesn't work without WebGL, and some other map related websites like mappilary.
[deleted]
Re: 3D Portability Initiative
#30I'm not sure why Vulkan couldn't work on windows: isn't it mostly in the hands of driver developers (i.e. Nvidia/AMD) rather than Microsoft?
It does work on Windows. Not sure about Windows Phone though.