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I have been trying to add WebGPU support to https://www.fciv.net - however the Three.js 3D engine I'm using isn't ready for WebGPU yet, and no current browsers support WebGPU yet.
Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
Sure, but where do you draw the line really? For me, having WebUSB and WebMIDI for example is useful, I want to be able to interact with synths over MIDI in the browser, or be able to access other accessories. I also love the idea of GPU access, so my personal limit has not been reached.
Multiply this by every vendor, developer and user of every browser who contributes to the specifications, and you end up with probably 1000 different directions everyone wants to move in. How do you decide which is the right direction?
Right now, the choice you have is which browser you use. If you don't want WebUSB or WebGPU or anything else "new and fancy", choose a browser that doesn't implement those things.
How do I render text with GPU? Do I render text on texture with CPU and then send that texture to GPU? Do I vectorize it and draw millions of tiny triangles to approximate those vectors? It's interesting for me to explore WebGPU as a canvas for app development, but it's not obvious to me how to draw text and text is everywhere.
> Do I vectorize it and draw millions of tiny triangles to approximate those vectors That is becoming feasible, using something called mesh shaders. The millions of tiny triangles will only be created on the fly inside the GPU, you will just send the vector geometry.
Compute shaders avoid all these problems and work on WebGPU 1.0 today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, AFAIK the WebGPU teams for Chrome, Firefox and Safari have been working closely together. Neither Firefox nor Safari are first, but I don't expect them to be much behind either. And as far as Chrome is concerned: WebGPU support for Android "isn't existent" either so far, currently it only works on desktop.
> Neither Firefox nor Safari are first, WebGPU is literally built in top of work done by Safari and Firefox.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do I vectorize it and draw millions of tiny triangles to approximate those vectors That is becoming feasible, using something called mesh shaders. The millions of tiny triangles will only be created on the fly inside the GPU, you will just send the vector geometry.
This is true, but there is a lot more to the story. For one, WebGPU does not (yet) support mesh shaders, though it may later as an extension. For two, consider a glyph such as "o" that has two contours. Real triangulation generates a mesh that only generates triangles between the outer and inner contours, and mesh shaders aren't good at that. There are techniques compatible with mesh shaders (cover and stencil) that…
I'm a bit confused. Can't you send the shape of O as a low res rough band (a closed wide loop) and enhance it in the mesh shader? This is how previous generation tessellation shaders and sub-division surfaces worked.
Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
Eventually I'd like to see WebGL deprecated, and perhaps an extension released to reimplement it. Or it could be adapted to translate calls to WebGPU, rather than having a completely separate implementation.
Is that realistic? No, of course not. Browser vendors take backwards compatibility pretty seriously, and WebGL is used on a ton of websites. Still, that'd be my preferred solution for avoiding said feature creep.
Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
Why does it bother you that browsers have many features? At this point browsers are essentially a cross-platform VM and it really seems like this trend will only accentuate in the future.