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Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

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

#81

Post by stcredzero »

taeric wrote: post #64
azakai wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring performance by framerate is tricky actually - it usually maxes out, and it's an inverse value, etc. It's a good quick measurement perhaps ("game X gets 50fps in Y but 60fps in Z", then clearly Z is better) but it's not an accurate measurement in many senses (for example both could get 60fps but one might use less CPU cycles). Measuring execution time for a fixed, deterministic non-stop workload is the best…

Makes sense. I still have to squint to really see the benefit here. :(

The web has always had the best discovery mechanisms. The problem endemic to Steam and the App Stores has been poor discovery. Good discovery mechanisms mean better information flow in the market, which generally means more innovation and consumer benefit.

But if the walled gardens get really good discovery, they would win and deservedly so. As it is, they smell a bit too much like crony capitalism.

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

#82

Post by stoptalkingshit »

azakai wrote: post #77
Pacabel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this "pushing the envelope"? Running existing software in some convoluted browser-based environment, and giving a worse experience in most ways, doesn't really seem like innovation to me. I think we could say it was pushing the envelope if the browser experience was superior to the native experience in every or almost every way. But that just isn't what we're seeing with these demos.

It is far superior in one major way - everyone has a web browser, and you can give them a link to run your game if it runs on the web. This avoids losing most of your users which is what happens if you ask them to install a plugin or a native app. Of course, on the other hand it is inferior in many ways. It's just another option for game creators (and other apps too). For some it will be useful, for others it will no…

Those are all hardware setups, whereas the browser is a very poorly designed portability layer (viewed in this way). It makes me physically angry how badly the browser vendors have dropped the ball here. It was obvious years ago that things were going this way, but instead of developing a proper application-development standard they just shoved everything into HTML. Every time I hear Mozilla talking about "innovation" I get upset because it is such a blatant lie. You have reinvented to past badly here. The best that can be said is you have been good at marketing the whole thing by constantly pretending that it's "just Javascript" etc, when the end result is completely static (i.e. not Javascript).

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

#83

Post by taeric »

stcredzero wrote: post #81
taeric wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. I still have to squint to really see the benefit here. :(

The web has always had the best discovery mechanisms. The problem endemic to Steam and the App Stores has been poor discovery. Good discovery mechanisms mean better information flow in the market, which generally means more innovation and consumer benefit. But if the walled gardens get really good discovery, they would win and deservedly so. As it is, they smell a bit too much like crony capitalism.

I just don't see it. The web does not have any better discoverability than any store front that proceeded it. What it has is a virtually free cost of entry.

Take the game 2048 that made headlines here. I didn't discover it because of some intrinsic discovery mechanism of the web any more than if I was to just keep watching the games page on amazon.

No, I found it because someone could pop it on github and share with all for free. And, it should be noted, in this case the game is based off of a riff of a popular iphone game. How did that game itself get discovered?

This is not to say that I hate HTML and all it entails. I make my living there. I do, however, find myself finally beginning to question the supposed benefits it is bringing to the table.

For my final point, consider that Steam is allowing me to play games that haven't seen release for years now. In some cases I miss out because I run linux, but their efforts are drastically increasing my ability to play current and past games in ways that I just do not see this approaching.

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

#84

Post by taeric »

corysama wrote: post #36
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.

Apologies for not responding. The post above talking about how this wasn't necessarily referring to frame rate basically hit my misunderstanding on the head.

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

#85

Post by bronxbomber92 »

aluhut wrote: post #78
Pacabel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can see, Mozilla is generally going in a direction that's alienating existing users, without necessarily bringing in any new ones. For example, it's widely understood today that Firefox has a much smaller share of the market now than it did a few years ago. Most measures I've seen show a drop from somewhere in the mid 30%'s down to under 20% today. Proportionally fewer Firefox users means less influence o…

I see with my parents and their peer group I've been supporting for years why the numbers for market share may also be misleading. I installed Firefox on all of their computers, taking favorites from IE. They all use Chrome today. You know why? They don't know. It was just there. Suddenly. Already set as preferred browser application. Every time I come by, I uninstall it. Every time I come back, it's there again. Ins…

I really have no idea what point this post is trying to make. I see anti IE (installing FF over IE), anti Chrome ("crapware") and anti FF ("feature growth within FF) sentiments, but no tie-together logic. Do you have a conclusive point you're trying to get across?

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

#86

Post by taeric »

stcredzero wrote: post #80
taeric wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this accomplish anything that Steam isn't already accomplishing, though? I have only bought humble bundles, and I already have a couple of hundred games on Steam. Tempted to buy more. And I don't own a windows machine.

How does this accomplish anything that Steam isn't already accomplishing, though? Browser based distribution has the potential to have better security than Steam currently has. Of course, Steam could implement those things as well. It could well be that Steam or something like it will win over the browser.

I don't see how a browser based distribution has the potential to be better as far as security. I don't think it is foregone it would be worse, mind.

What does a browser by in terms of added security? Encrypted connections did not spring in to being with ssl. And, doing a secured stateful connection seems easier/better than the stateless messages method of traditional http applications.

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

#87

Post by soapdog »

Pacabel wrote: post #74
pvnick wrote: post #11

This is very exciting. I've had the chance to meet Brendan Eich a couple of times at Moz conferences, and he never fails to strike me as a visionary and a super nice guy. Between the asm.js stuff and Rust (which I actually had the privilege of witnessing the much-anticipated unveilling several years ago. Honestly I thought it was an overly-ambitious fools errand but that's why I'm not cto of mozilla), he really seems…

From what I can see, Mozilla is generally going in a direction that's alienating existing users, without necessarily bringing in any new ones. For example, it's widely understood today that Firefox has a much smaller share of the market now than it did a few years ago. Most measures I've seen show a drop from somewhere in the mid 30%'s down to under 20% today. Proportionally fewer Firefox users means less influence o…

Firefox OS has been launched in 16 countries. You may not be on an emerging market but people on most of these countries are enjoying what affordable smartphones can give them. In Venezuela alone Firefox OS already has a larger marketshare than Windows Phone. Firefox OS went from 0 to 16 countries, 4 hardware manufacturers and 4 global telecoms in 2 years. And it did that while being open, accepting contribution, encouraging sharing and open culture, placing privacy and values over profits. Yes, Android and iOS are larger, much much larger, but we need to think what kind of world do we want in ten years. A world where each mobile device is a silo with its platform under complete draconian control of a single company thats usually from the northern region of California or where each platform is embracing open standards, where apps are light and cross platform where people can go from consuming content to creating content fairly easy (HTML being way easier to learn than Obj-C).

There is a reason why we're using the World Wide Web right now. Its not an app. Its an ecosystem based on standards where everyone agrees more or less to play by the same rules. Its also easy to learn so anyone can put anything online, it doesn't matter if you're building a home page about crappy gingerbread people, you don't need permission from Apple or Google or a lot of knowledge to do it. The Web won as main medium to exchange stuff because its easy and open.

Initiatives such as NaCL and similar are not open. ASM.js based stuff work even on platforms that doesn't support it. Its about being compatible and playing well with others.

Mozilla is a strong player and it is not playing a game where the others need to lose for it to win. Its playing a game where cooperation is the main objective. Firefox OS doesn't need to win, it just need to show people that you can do whatever you need using web technologies that don't belong in a silo.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant but I get really frustrated when people seem to be content to throw all the advancements we did for the web during the last 20 years into something as shallow as user base numbers.

Four years ago no one could believe that a whole OS could be built on top of a web engine. That browser would be able to play AAA games without plugins. That we could do videoconferences using p2p with nothing but HTML/CSS/JS and yet we can. Now, put your imagination and dreams to work and imagine what the next four years will bring. Thing a bit longer and imagine what could happen if instead of trying to embrace proprietary tech we decided to move the web forward...

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

#88

Post by taeric »

azakai wrote: post #65
taeric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it is safe to assume there will always be native targets for UE4. So, how will the web target really be a benefit? I can't imagine the DOM inspector will really be that useful in designing a 3d game. Am I wrong?

The web target is mainly of benefit in getting to users, not in designing the game. For design, you would use the engine's normal tools for all targets anyhow, web included.

As I said elsewhere, I only take this if you are saying "users" and meaning "developers."

I can see the point, but I see access to the tools as way more valuable than this. And with the tools, I'm curious just how many more "users" developers will truly be able to aim for. One off demos not withstanding.

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

#89

Post by dingdingdang »

ehsanu1 wrote: post #21
leeoniya wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... you're welcome :)

This also highlights why Firefox's addon system is in some ways superior to Chrome's extensions - this would be impossible in Chrome.

Try Palemoon, it highlights FF's basic openness (and compile-ability on a _not_ 8gb+ rig) very well too and fast while it's at it.. Also I would advocate using a custom userChrome.css file for FF instead of extensions, much lighter and clearer setup in my opinion.

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

#90

Post by soapdog »

argh people here are so negative. You get a lot of the content you consume over the web. You can stream videos over the web and that is more convenient that using DVDs. you get "facts" from wikipedia and similar resources and thats easier than picking dead tree encyclopedia. This is about convenience. When games start being playable on browsers you won't need a local install or different ports for different platforms. You will need just a browser. It won't matter if you're on windows, mac or linux. It will just work. That means reduced cost for the studio. That means less support calls. That means easier setup.

That will also mean that people will be able to experience with less mainstream stuff. Sharing stuff on the web doesn't require Apple, Google, whatever company approval. It becomes easier to create content and users have less resistance to opening a web page when compared to installing a game. Also its safer since JS language is pretty safe regarding exploits and viruses and general malware when compared with something built with native code on your machine.

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