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WebGL Water

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Re: WebGL Water

#21

Post by meheleventyone »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

It's interesting to think of the reasons we don't have browser-based 3D renderers. Sure, WebGL exists. But it seems like the promise fizzled out, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's as simple as "Steam is the money pipeline, and everyone makes native games on Steam."

There’s Shadertoy and Three.js although the main reason we don’t see many 3D web games is both Steam being where the money is, portability to consoles and asset size. The latter in particular makes the web unattractive to game developers used to delivering gigabytes. It’s a different mode of production and people won’t make that switch en masse until someone proves it out.

Now Blender is really good we’re seeing a lot more indie games exploring low-poly 3D aesthetics. Further the increasing viability of using more compact formats like SDF hopefully means we see even more people realising they can actually build something on the web.

Re: WebGL Water

#22

Post by astlouis44 »

lukebitts wrote: post #19
astlouis44 wrote: post #8

This demo is more recent, and FAR more impressive in my humble opinion: https://doom-portal-in-webgl.vercel.app/

What’s more impressive about it? Two static lights and some normals maps, compared to caustics, wave simulation and physics. One of these is much harder than the other, in realtime no less

Did you put your glasses on..?

Re: WebGL Water

#23

Post by astlouis44 »

kingcharles wrote: post #17
astlouis44 wrote: post #8

This demo is more recent, and FAR more impressive in my humble opinion: https://doom-portal-in-webgl.vercel.app/

The fact that this runs like a dream in my browser on my $300 Acer laptop, on my second monitor, is actually unbelievable.

Yeah pretty amazing. You should respost it to HN!

Re: WebGL Water

#24

Post by lukebitts »

astlouis44 wrote: post #22
lukebitts wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s more impressive about it? Two static lights and some normals maps, compared to caustics, wave simulation and physics. One of these is much harder than the other, in realtime no less

Did you put your glasses on..?

Clearly I’m talking about the technical aspects of the demos. Not a lot to discuss if you think one is prettier than the other

Re: WebGL Water

#25

Post by astlouis44 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

It's interesting to think of the reasons we don't have browser-based 3D renderers. Sure, WebGL exists. But it seems like the promise fizzled out, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's as simple as "Steam is the money pipeline, and everyone makes native games on Steam."

Well old titles that are on Steam have been ported to WebAssembly... and keep in mind these are just straight ports with little to no compression or asset fetching to reduce the file size and load times.

Curse of Monkey Island: https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html (press esc key right away upon load to skip straight to playing)

Baldur's Gate 2 demo: https://personal-1094.web.app/gemrb.html

Diablo demo: https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/

Humongous Arts games:

Spy Fox in Dry Cereal demo: https://thatgamedev01.itch.io/spyfoxindrycereal

Pajama Sam demo: https://thatgamedev01.itch.io/pajama-sam-3

Re: WebGL Water

#26

Post by [deleted] »

robbedpeter wrote: post #16
sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

It's interesting to think of the reasons we don't have browser-based 3D renderers. Sure, WebGL exists. But it seems like the promise fizzled out, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's as simple as "Steam is the money pipeline, and everyone makes native games on Steam."

The browser is not an appropriate medium for games that need non trivial access to local storage and system input. Browser compatibility, and being subordinate to multiple third parties isn't great, either. Rather than fighting with browser limitations, it's easier to package, deliver, and maintain a stand-alone application. Steam isn't a major consideration once you've gone into the weeds of implementing software th…

[deleted]

Re: WebGL Water

#27

Post by abdusco »

I know it's not meant to be 100% perfect simulation of water, but the lack of air bubbles, or the waves not growing in amplitude when I smash the sphere in the water makes it feel really dense and off.

Re: WebGL Water

#28

Post by Snetry »

I remember looking at this a decade ago with an old Sony Xperia phone and just being amazed at the possibilities of the web.

10 years later it still looks as good as I remember

Re: WebGL Water

#29

Post by mobmunk823798 »

pjmlp wrote: post #13
sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

It's interesting to think of the reasons we don't have browser-based 3D renderers. Sure, WebGL exists. But it seems like the promise fizzled out, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's as simple as "Steam is the money pipeline, and everyone makes native games on Steam."

Easy, so many reasons beyond just blaming Apple, - WebGL is a subset of ES 3.0, when the hardware can do GL ES 3.2 - WebGPU, when it arrives sometime during 2022, it will be a 1.0 MVP of the features from Metal, Vulkan and DX 12, with yet another shading language that looks like a mix of C++/HLSL/Rust, WGSL. - If you just want compute, now WebGPU is the only option, although GL ES 3.2 has it. After two failed attempt…

I tried to do mobile web gamedev and found it impossible: both Apple and Google break mobile web games in different ways, I presume because it could threaten the 30% cut their mobile stores get. For example, the HTML5 Minecraft I've never seen run properly in a mobile web browser:

https://classic.minecraft.net/

Mobile Safari:

- Forever lacked >WebGL 1.0

- WebGL very slow compared to native

- Won't let you use accelerometer, motion control, etc., because "Privacy" (but privacy loving Apple was totally going to scan our iPhone photos until we all raised hell...)

- Web Audio stack breaks games in interesting ways desktop doesn't. "Oh, we don't let you load .mp3 audio samples by default like desktop browsers can...."

Android Chromium:

- Has 200-300ms audio latency on many devices. Here's a demo where touching/clicking the squares should have instant response (try it on desktop) but many Androids have the lag:

https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/TouchPad/index.html

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