Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Given the distance between WebGL 2.0 and GL ES 3.2, with the 10 years that took to made it available everywhere, good luck waiting for WebGPU to become mature for adoption. WebGL2 took 4 and a half year to complete (with OpenGL ES 3.0: published in August 2012, and implementations of WebGL2 final version shipped in browsers in early 2017). Why did Apple refused to implement it for four more years? I don't know, but…
What guarantees do you have it won't happen again? Even if Apple had done it on time, it was a 2012 hardware API for 2017 hardware, and never exposed a complete ES 3.0 API surface, nor anything beyond it up to ES 3.2. Intel had two failed attempts to bring compute into the browser. Yes it is a very bad thing, when Vulkan can keep using GLSL and HLSL, while DX12 happily will use any HLSL from the API history, and Meta…
Apple was pretty clear about their intent not to ship WebGL2, and they did the opposite for WebGPU so it's not gonna be the same story. Of course, I can't be 100% sure that Apple won't change their mind (like they eventually did for WebGL2) or anything, but there is no reason to believe they'll do so.
> Even if Apple had done it on time, it was a 2012 hardware API for 2017 hardware
Most games released in 2017 had to support hardware from 2012 anyway. Even AAA games released this year support GPU released in 2012[0]! For non AAA games, targeting a 5-years old API is probably the newest you can afford. We're not talking about bringing the bleeding edge GPU tech to the web (it won't, it's never standardised anyway, like Mesh shaders you talked about). The goal is to provide modern standardized tech to developers, and it does it in a portable way, which makes it even more affordable.
> Intel had two failed attempts to bring compute into the browser.
So what ?
> Yes it is a very bad thing, when Vulkan can keep using GLSL and HLSL, while DX12 happily will use any HLSL from the API history, and Metal can use proper C++14 shaders.
Vulkan uses SPIR-V, not HSL or GLSL. Translation tooling exist, but it also exists for WGSL -> SPIR-V[1]
Each platform has its own shading language, will this one be better than the other, I don't know but I don't think it's gonna be worse either.
> WGSL is web politics as usual.
Not really. See this summary[2] from a Mozilla gfx engineer:
[0]: https://support.activision.com/black-ops-cold-war/articles/m...
[1]: https://github.com/gfx-rs/naga
[2]: https://kvark.github.io/webgpu-debate/SPIR-V.component.html