Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla and Epic Preview Unreal Engine 4 Running in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 141 posts

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

#91

Post by stoptalkingshit »

chc wrote: post #25
MichaelGG wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially considering that asm.js isn't really using a JS execution engine. You can smuggle a low-level machine code via any mechanism. As I understand, without asm.js specific optimizations, it doesn't really work. I know, it's a cute way to get some movement without the political nightmare of having to decide on a proper VM for the web. Since it's "just JavaScript", other browsers will run but be really slow, lead…

It is true that most other browsers don't have special compilers for asm.js, but they still tend to get pretty good performance out of it.

Of course they do! asm.js is a collection of everything in Javascript that optimizes on the current hardware. It's not the least bit dynamic, i.e. it is not Javascript.

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

#92

Post by taeric »

cwyers wrote: post #53
taeric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you look at the browser makers who primarily target operating systems other than their own (Safari doesn't count, as Safari for Windows is mainly a developer tool, not a product; and Opera doesn't count, as it's now based on Chrome, rather than being its own), they're pushing heavily for the browser to be the userspace, both in terms of shipping an OS based around their browsers (ChromeOS/FirefoxOS) and shipping a…

So, if you look at the four main browser vendors... Well, two of the four browser vendors, you will find that browser vendors would like to extend the reach of the browser.

Not sure how that is surprising.

The argument for wanting to target all of the platforms seems nice. Except the major tooling companies that want to target multiple platforms have already learned how. Seeing games come out on PC, Xbox, and Playstation is proof enough of that.

So, again, what does this buy that the tooling does not already support? Especially if you simply design things such that they can be cross compiled with C.

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

#93

Post by drawkbox »

Pacabel wrote: post #76
nawitus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

For distribution and always updating content is where the benefit is (much like an appstore). Flash gaming was huge before mobile for the same reason, simple to play.

For the consumer it should be no different except they have an easy url to get to it, maybe saves are a url and there is a bit more security in theory if it is through a plugin that is widely used or tool that is widely used (asm.js).

Really this has tried to get going multiple times and really should have. Flash games were huge, Unity web games are coming up. Shockwave games back in 2000ish started it. Being open this is even better because maybe we can see WebGL gaming take off on mobile. 3d games in the browser have changed over time. Quakelive is going desktop client because browsers changing or removing NPAPI for PPAPI (http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php?34313) so maybe this is a good time to go the asm.js/emscripten route as plugin support is getting disrupted.

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

#94

Post by stoptalkingshit »

soapdog wrote: post #90

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…

Clueless. Just clueless. None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us. The stewards of the browser did a terrible job of designing it, as proven by shoddy hacks like asm.js. Did you know that it took WebGL to get them to introduce typed arrays? They weren't smart enough to see the usefulness of this, they had to bumble into it. Same with async HTTP requests. So woopty-doo you've caught up to where the JVM was over a decade ago. Semantic HTML has been destroyed by this mindset also.

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

#95

Post by stcredzero »

taeric wrote: post #83
stcredzero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The web does not have any better discoverability than any store front that proceeded it.

You're kidding, right? (Maybe not old enough to remember the world pre-Google?)

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

#96

Post by stcredzero »

stoptalkingshit wrote: post #94
soapdog wrote: post #90

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…

Clueless. Just clueless. None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us. The stewards of the browser did a terrible job of designing it, as proven by shoddy hacks like asm.js. Did you know that it took WebGL to get them to introduce typed arrays? They weren't smart enough to see the usefulness of this, they had to bumble into it. Same with async HTTP requests. So woopty-doo you…

None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us.

No, but they are tied to the web, for which browsers and JavaScript are an incumbent technology. You are right, in the same way that Windows has nothing in particular to do with games, outside of a fortunate adoption of DirectX. It's just that it's the way the world turned out. Admittedly, there are downsides.

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

#97

Post by stcredzero »

taeric wrote: post #86
stcredzero wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please re-read. Browsers don't have exemplary security, but, what they have can be slightly better than simple code signing. Also, I say it's entirely possible that the other platforms to leapfrog them. The problem with current sandboxes for native code, is that they disarm the participants while empowering malicious code.

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

#98

Post by stoptalkingshit »

stcredzero wrote: post #96
stoptalkingshit wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clueless. Just clueless. None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us. The stewards of the browser did a terrible job of designing it, as proven by shoddy hacks like asm.js. Did you know that it took WebGL to get them to introduce typed arrays? They weren't smart enough to see the usefulness of this, they had to bumble into it. Same with async HTTP requests. So woopty-doo you…

None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us. No, but they are tied to the web, for which browsers and JavaScript are an incumbent technology. You are right, in the same way that Windows has nothing in particular to do with games, outside of a fortunate adoption of DirectX. It's just that it's the way the world turned out. Admittedly, there are downsides.

The popularity of DirectX doesn't vindicate Windows either. So what's your point? It's shit but, eh, that's the way the world turned out? People have every right to be annoyed because the people who were entrusted with the concept of the web implemented it very badly. At least on Windows there's a serious effort to give me as much of the machine's power as possible. I had a better programming experience with Java applets more than a decade ago. It is a joke.

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

#99

Post by soapdog »

stoptalkingshit wrote: post #94
soapdog wrote: post #90

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…

Clueless. Just clueless. None of these benefits are tied to the crap browser platform that's been foisted on us. The stewards of the browser did a terrible job of designing it, as proven by shoddy hacks like asm.js. Did you know that it took WebGL to get them to introduce typed arrays? They weren't smart enough to see the usefulness of this, they had to bumble into it. Same with async HTTP requests. So woopty-doo you…

WTF? You simply go around calling people clueless without knowing their background? What is wrong with you?

The browser platform is not perfect, its not close to perfect, its evolving to do something that it was not originally designed to but it still the best shot at cross platform software. You can pick the JVM for all elegance it had, it never achieved what simple servers with bad markup languages did. There is a reason why you are typing on a browser right now and not using a java applet. The reason is that even with all the drawbacks of web technology, it works, it is easy to implement, it is easy to learn. Its not about über programmers in ivory towers, its about empowering everyone with a technology that is easy to grasp. It takes a very good professional to craft a good web app but it still easy enough that people from non-technical backgrounds can share knowledge. Its a platform for sharing stuff.

Yes they added typed arrays just now. The engines evolved a lot during the last two years. Lots of things are being ironed out. Instead of just seeing deficiencies, see how progress is being made with something that is open, free and common.

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

#100

Post by pcwalton »

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…

> Asm.js is pretty unremarkable. It's a human-unfriendly subset of JavaScript. NaCl is a much better approach that would ideally be adopted by the major browsers. Unfortunately, we've seen nothing but hostility toward it from Mozilla.

Why is NaCl better? NaCl adds all of the complexity of LLVM to the Web platform, and is tied to Pepper, which is a Chrome-specific, nonstandard API. None of this is true for asm.js.

> Even then, it's doubtful Rust alone will have any major impact on the web any time soon.

Rust isn't designed to have an impact on the Web directly; it's designed to be a programming language.

Post reply on HN