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Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

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Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#11
Our team is working to build out support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 to support WebGPU, so game developers and real-time 3D developers can export their creations to the web at near native performance and access features like computer shaders.

Long term goal is to disrupt Steam and the App Stores.

We're also working on WebXR support to enable UE VR apps on the web. If anyone is interested and wants to learn more, you can join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#12

Our team is working to build out support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 to support WebGPU, so game developers and real-time 3D developers can export their creations to the web at near native performance and access features like computer shaders. Long term goal is to disrupt Steam and the App Stores. We're also working on WebXR support to enable UE VR apps on the web. If anyone is interested and wants to lear…

It seems like you aren't associated with Epic? What's the long term outcome here? Have Epic take your PRs? Get hired\acquihired (it's unclear if you are a company or a group of hobbyists)? It seems like when WebGPU is production ready Epic will support it as well as WebXR...

Epic's goal is very obviously to disrupt Steam and app stores as well... Ignore all of this if you actually are an Epic employee of course :)

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#13

Our team is working to build out support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 to support WebGPU, so game developers and real-time 3D developers can export their creations to the web at near native performance and access features like computer shaders. Long term goal is to disrupt Steam and the App Stores. We're also working on WebXR support to enable UE VR apps on the web. If anyone is interested and wants to lear…

It seems like you aren't associated with Epic? What's the long term outcome here? Have Epic take your PRs? Get hired\acquihired (it's unclear if you are a company or a group of hobbyists)? It seems like when WebGPU is production ready Epic will support it as well as WebXR... Epic's goal is very obviously to disrupt Steam and app stores as well... Ignore all of this if you actually are an Epic employee of course :)

Just to clarify, we're a funded startup and we've already had calls with them showcasing our platform. The goal is to get our SDK and tools in the hand of every UE developer out there.

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#14

Is there any advantage at this point in time to port a game to WebGPU? Is it going to run faster, or have broader browser support in the future?

assuming you are comparing it to webgl. WebGPU has better compute support. in practice this means you can more effectively use shaders to perform things like physics, math heavy computation, or algorithms that benefit from massive concurrency. this puts the advantages way beyond just games.

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#16

Is there any advantage at this point in time to port a game to WebGPU? Is it going to run faster, or have broader browser support in the future?

Not at all, it took 10 years for WebGL 2.0 to be generally available, and WebGPU is with luck reaching MVP 1.0 in 2022 on Chrome, let alone anywhere else.

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#17

Is there any advantage at this point in time to port a game to WebGPU? Is it going to run faster, or have broader browser support in the future?

No to first question, unless you count learning, as it's mot enabled in browsers yet. Maybe to second (depending on your game).

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#18
My main worry with WebGPU is the dependence with Javascript. If I understand it correctly, you can't use web APIs nor stuff like WebGPU directly through web assembly anyway, so there's always a javascript glue layer involved.

Now, I know some languages like Rust have decent bindings that hide all that, but I wonder about the performance cost of that glue. Has someone measured it, or estimated how better we could go without it? Or am I completely wrong about this? Or are there clear plans to make this better/disappear? (Though in my brief research I didn't find anything like it).

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#19

Our team is working to build out support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 to support WebGPU, so game developers and real-time 3D developers can export their creations to the web at near native performance and access features like computer shaders. Long term goal is to disrupt Steam and the App Stores. We're also working on WebXR support to enable UE VR apps on the web. If anyone is interested and wants to lear…

As a gamer though, why would I want to play any of these developers' games through the browser instead of Steam?

Re: Porting WebGL Shaders to WebGPU

#20
post #18

My main worry with WebGPU is the dependence with Javascript. If I understand it correctly, you can't use web APIs nor stuff like WebGPU directly through web assembly anyway, so there's always a javascript glue layer involved. Now, I know some languages like Rust have decent bindings that hide all that, but I wonder about the performance cost of that glue. Has someone measured it, or estimated how better we could go w…

https://github.com/WebAssembly/WASI/issues/53
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