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WebGPU Fundamentals

webgpufundamentals.org

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Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#71

Post by bhouston »

capableweb wrote: post #25
bhouston wrote: post #15

To see the spreading support for webgpu check out https://web3dsurvey.com

Unfortunately no source published as far as I can see. Would be handy to have available + issue tracker. Since you seem to be the one responsible, I'll write my feedback here instead of a issue tracker: It shouldn't recommend hot-linking the script, but rather to include the script into your project (or at least include a Subresource Integrity attribute so it doesn't change unexpectedly). Also feels like it's unneces…

I purposely didn’t mangle the collection script. You can read it easily with all original variable names. Just format it which many browsers do automatically these days. I did this so you can verify its behavior.

I can add a npm package as well so people can embed the collection script as well.

I will also add an integrity check as well.

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#72

Post by archerx »

mpldr wrote: post #19

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.

I used webUSB to make an NFC login system and it was awesome, what’s the problem?

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#74

Post by bobajeff »

vbezhenar wrote: post #10

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.

You could convert the paths in a font file into a series of triangles using some vertices as a control points for quadratic bezier curves. Then some code for laying out the glyphs in a line. Much of this could be done on a shader I think.

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#75

Post by kajaktum »

adwn wrote: post #69
whitemary wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Honda Financial website is Chrome-only. https://honda.americanhondafinance.com

Firefox 112 doesn't seem to have any problems rendering it. What do you mean by "Chrome-only"?

I mean it doesn’t do any QA on them. My banking website won’t load on Firefox for example.

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#76

Post by jillesvangurp »

mpldr wrote: post #19

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.

Who's the royal we here? It's great that you have personal limits. But why should "we" care about those?

Seems like a perfectly reasonable new feature to me. I'm actually looking forward to people using this to build some cool stuff. Why should that not be a thing?

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#77

Post by EntrePrescott »

dist-epoch wrote: post #21
rvz wrote: post #14

[flagged]

The writing is on the wall. Firefox will ditch it's engine and just become a skin over Chrome, just like Edge did.

While I strongly doubt that, I'll still add the end of the joke:

… and Mitchell Baker will fire all of Mozilla's engine developers and use the money saved by that to give herself another multi-million dollar salary raise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary...

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#78

Post by pjmlp »

CSSer wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to Google blocking WebGL compute shaders adoption. We could have had them three years ago.

Interesting. Do you have any more context around this? It sounds uncharacteristic of Google to do so given their usual stance on browsers being all things to all people.

Yes,

https://registry.khronos.org/webgl/specs/latest/2.0-compute/

https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader

And then Google decides not implementating it after all, because of WebGPU.

https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader/issues...

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#79

Post by pjmlp »

fulafel wrote: post #59
pjmlp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to Google blocking WebGL compute shaders adoption. We could have had them three years ago.

There's a lot of literature about font rendering predating compute shaders too, compute shaders are not a functional prerequisite by any means. Here's eg one case: https://github.com/astiopin/webgl_fonts

Yeah, that as well.

WebGL 2.0 is kind of PlayStation 3 like in capabilities, that we seldom see that in action besides shadertoy, Google Maps/Earth, and 360° views on ecommerce sites is another matter.

Re: WebGPU Fundamentals

#80

Post by magicalhippo »

mpldr wrote: post #19

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.

WebUSB was actually useful to me not long ago. I installed Home Assistant and its ESPHome[1] companion, and ESPHome had support for using WebUSB to upload the firmware to a blank ESP8266 I had. I didn't have to install or set up anything on my Windows machine, and the whole process was very quick and convenient.

It seems clear to me that the main issue here is that a lot of programs aren't closely tied to the hardware or the OS. Building them to be so is an annoyance for both users and developers. As Scott McNealy said, you don't need to know how to operate a nuclear power plant to turn on the lights, and most users just want to get stuff done.

That we have three major operating systems still going relatively strong is evidence that there are differences that matters to people. But for a lot of applications those differences don't. The WebXYZ stuff thus increases usability a lot by simultaneously solving the cross-platform compatibility issues and distribution.

In my ESPHome example above literally opened the website, plugged in the USB cable to my device, clicked a button on the web page and the job was done.

So while I don't really like that the same web browser is used to surf other web sites, given that these WebXYZ components present additional security risks and fingerprinting opportunities, I can't deny that they're useful.

[1]: https://esphome.io/guides/getting_started_hassio.html

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