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Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#31

Post by taeric »

meritt wrote: post #22
taeric wrote: post #7

This is neat and all, but I wonder if things are really better moving to "in the browser." The discussion is of "upwards of 60% as fast as native." Is this using the same amount of processing power as native, or is this "67% as fast as native, using 200% of the CPU as a native solution?" I mean, I realize that processors and machines are only getting more capable. It seems silly to start requiring faster and faster p…

The same can be said for all development over the past 15-20 years. The reality is development time and cost is drastically lowered when intermediate developers can produce working software with minimal consideration toward optimization, lowering resource usage or decreasing overall package size.

And better tooling helps here more than anything else. The giant elephant in the room nobody likes to speak towards is that Flash dominated not because it was a great language, but because they had awesome tooling around it. This is doing very little to address that.

Now, the Unreal Engine is a great tool in and of itself. Having it target the browser is the questionable part to me.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#32

Post by taeric »

mixedbit wrote: post #26
taeric wrote: post #7

This is neat and all, but I wonder if things are really better moving to "in the browser." The discussion is of "upwards of 60% as fast as native." Is this using the same amount of processing power as native, or is this "67% as fast as native, using 200% of the CPU as a native solution?" I mean, I realize that processors and machines are only getting more capable. It seems silly to start requiring faster and faster p…

Games performance is often GPU bound. If a driving language (C++, JavaScript of whatever else) is fast enough to compute application logic without delaying frames, it doesn't really matter if it is x% slower compared to some other language. GPUs in WebGL are programed using native shaders so there is no performance penalty for GPU computations.

Then explain the "within X% of native" from the link. If this demo is strictly limited by the GPU, then why isn't it as fast as native, period?

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#33

Post by onedognight »

ebbv wrote: post #27

They say "without plugins" but that's kind of misleading. Firefox includes asm.js functionality, but no other browser does. Just because it's included by default doesn't mean it's not a plugin. Chrome includes Flash by default, it's still a plugin.

asm.js is a subset of JS, so by the conventional definition, it is not a plugin. The game should run, albeit slowly, on other browsers.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#34

Post by zanny »

abhinavk wrote: post #16
clarry wrote: post #10

Epic Games and Mozilla are demonstrating how the Web is continuing to evolve as a powerful platform [..] And you're still using a youtube embed because a single, simple tag like is too effin' problematic. Yeah yeah, I get it. isn't relevant to gaming. WebGL and gaming are cool new stuff, is prehistoric crap nobody cares about anymore. The world has moved on.

Serving videos off YouTube allows them to avoid bandwidth costs. P.S.: YouTube uses their HTML5 player wherever possible.

I have youtube html5 video on, and it only works on adless videos. This one, for example, doesn't use the html5 player.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#35

Post by mixedbit »

taeric wrote: post #32
mixedbit wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games performance is often GPU bound. If a driving language (C++, JavaScript of whatever else) is fast enough to compute application logic without delaying frames, it doesn't really matter if it is x% slower compared to some other language. GPUs in WebGL are programed using native shaders so there is no performance penalty for GPU computations.

Then explain the "within X% of native" from the link. If this demo is strictly limited by the GPU, then why isn't it as fast as native, period?

The X% from the link is not about performance of the demo, but about performance of asm.js: "In less than 12 months, optimizations have increased the performance of Web applications using asm.js from 40% to within 67% of native, and we expect it to get even faster". To me such number doesn't mean much, it most likely refers to some micro benchmark that achieved 67% of native performance.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#36

Post by corysama »

taeric wrote: post #7

This is neat and all, but I wonder if things are really better moving to "in the browser." The discussion is of "upwards of 60% as fast as native." Is this using the same amount of processing power as native, or is this "67% as fast as native, using 200% of the CPU as a native solution?" I mean, I realize that processors and machines are only getting more capable. It seems silly to start requiring faster and faster p…

67% native speed == 1.0/0.67 native processor requirement == 149% CPU compared to native solution.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#37

Post by cromwellian »

I just bought Titanfall yesterday. I run this on a watercooled PC, dual GPU setup. I wouldn't have bought such a PC setup just to run at 60% of system performance.

I think Mozilla is marketing this wrong. Triple-AAA titles go for squeezing every last ounce of system performance. I don't think there is anything to be gained to putting a game like Titanfall, which has 5 gigabytes of assets (some UE titles are much bigger and need blu-ray distribution) inside of a browser. Long downloads, long startup, half performance.

But there is enormous value of running casual games with asm.js. Something like Clash of Clans, or Flappy Bird will run just fine. Pitching that asm.js is going to scale games from mobile up through desktop performance I think is overselling things and bound to lead to disappointment.

Rather than believe we're going to get Call of Duty running acceptably on Firefox OS. Let's first settle for CSR Racing, or HayDay.

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#38

Post by williadc »

ebbv wrote: post #27

They say "without plugins" but that's kind of misleading. Firefox includes asm.js functionality, but no other browser does. Just because it's included by default doesn't mean it's not a plugin. Chrome includes Flash by default, it's still a plugin.

Not true:

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/11/26/chrome-an...

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#39

Post by Touche »

pcwalton wrote: post #6
Touche wrote: post #3

> demos Asm.js needs fewer demos and more finished production applications. Apparently Epic isn't excited enough about this technology to release one of their games on the web.

There aren't even any native Unreal Engine 4 games out yet that I'm aware of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unr... That's the purpose of this demo: to show that the Web stack is ready even for upcoming AAA games, not just ones from a few years ago.

Being ready for games doesn't mean games will come, just as U3 games haven't come (except for the one that hasn't shipped yet). Would be nice if Epic shipped one of their games; why haven't they?

Re: Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

#40

Post by nawitus »

cromwellian wrote: post #37

I just bought Titanfall yesterday. I run this on a watercooled PC, dual GPU setup. I wouldn't have bought such a PC setup just to run at 60% of system performance. I think Mozilla is marketing this wrong. Triple-AAA titles go for squeezing every last ounce of system performance. I don't think there is anything to be gained to putting a game like Titanfall, which has 5 gigabytes of assets (some UE titles are much bigg…

You can cache the assets locally, just like on any other game.

These tech demos are about pushing the envelope, which is needed to make the web a better platform for high-end games.

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