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Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#81

Post by azakai »

Joeri wrote: post #77
azakai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebGL is basically at native speed. The only issue might be if a GL extension you need is not in WebGL yet, but that is moving along quickly. asm.js can run close to native speed, depends on the JS engine of course, but it's not far off. See for example https://github.com/joelgwebber/bench2d

To qualify, close to native speed means about two thirds of native speed in a best case scenario. Fine for games that don't stress the hardware to its limits, but not for top tier.

First of all performance is CPU+GPU, and the GPU side is basically at native speed. Many games are mostly GPU bound, so for them they would run at full native speed.

For games that are CPU bound, two thirds of speed is the current average on a set of benchmarks on Firefox, yes. But it will vary on codebase, and is constantly improving.

Regardless, you say that top tier games won't work. What is UE4 and the higher-end stuff Unity demoed, if not top tier?

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Joeri wrote: post #77
azakai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebGL is basically at native speed. The only issue might be if a GL extension you need is not in WebGL yet, but that is moving along quickly. asm.js can run close to native speed, depends on the JS engine of course, but it's not far off. See for example https://github.com/joelgwebber/bench2d

To qualify, close to native speed means about two thirds of native speed in a best case scenario. Fine for games that don't stress the hardware to its limits, but not for top tier.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#83

Post by ANTSANTS »

papa_bear wrote: post #18

Is there an straightforward way to solve the issue with crazy load times on big WebGL games? If I remember correctly, I played one a while ago and it had to download assets for ten minutes before I could play it and it was a huge downer. If this becomes the norm I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to get used to, but I was coming at this game from the mindset of playing instant gratification flash games. It would be coo…

People forget that modern 3D games take up huge amounts of storage space. Meshes, textures, maps, and sound recordings aren't cheap.

You could mitigate this by asynchronously loading certain files, or outright designing a game to be quickly downloadable (for example, by using an art style that uses only shading and mesh coloration instead of textures, or by going all demoscene and procedurally generating everything), but for anything resembling a modern "AAA" game, a long download time is probably unavoidable.

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#84

Post by ps4fanboy »

gisenberg wrote: post #37
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they'll give it away in the free version like with Web Player authoring. Well, I can hope :)

When they were doing the Flash version, it wasn't free. Still, one can hope!

That was imposed by adobe not unity.

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#85

Post by devcpp »

azakai wrote: post #38
davexunit wrote: post #34

Mozilla, please stop promoting nonfree software. It would be better to assist in the creation of a free game engine for the web instead of Unity.

I am a FOSS advocate as well, but I disagree that this announcement is a bad thing. First, Mozilla has and does assist in the creation of FOSS game engines and tools (Gladius, CubicVR, help to various web ports like JSMESS and various open source game engines, etc.). Second, even the LGPL shows that absolute avoidance is not always the best thing to do regarding closed-source code. Reality is more complex. Sometimes…

>First, Mozilla has and does assist in the creation of FOSS game engines and tools

Parent comment didn't imply the contrary. "stop promoting nonfree software" doesn't mean "stop only promoting nonfree software".

>even the LGPL shows that absolute avoidance is not always the best thing to do regarding closed-source code

If you ask the FSF, the LGPL should really be used as a last resort. Unity is not too common yet (and hopefully will never be as long as it remains proprietary), so I don't see why we should push it forward by helping its integration. Same goes for HTML5's EME. I'd rather have a purely open platform with less features and popularity than a platform with an open base and countless incompatible binary blobs sitting onto it. And even the abomination that EME is would at least be an actual standard.

>Unity engine is a proprietary codebase, they also have lots of code that is FOSS

If you can't build it, it's not worth integrating. The only thing this is good for is making a FOSS alternative (although I guess they keep the important bits secret). I'd be using Google Chrome if "99% open source" was good enough. By using Firefox (though Chromium would be fine if it weren't for the user-hostile features), I precisely want to keep a clean FOSS platform. Conversely, I only use an Android ROM because there's no good alternative, which is not the case for Unity. So I wish they'd keep it out for now.

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#86

Post by azakai »

devcpp wrote: post #85
azakai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a FOSS advocate as well, but I disagree that this announcement is a bad thing. First, Mozilla has and does assist in the creation of FOSS game engines and tools (Gladius, CubicVR, help to various web ports like JSMESS and various open source game engines, etc.). Second, even the LGPL shows that absolute avoidance is not always the best thing to do regarding closed-source code. Reality is more complex. Sometimes…

>First, Mozilla has and does assist in the creation of FOSS game engines and tools Parent comment didn't imply the contrary. "stop promoting nonfree software" doesn't mean "stop only promoting nonfree software". >even the LGPL shows that absolute avoidance is not always the best thing to do regarding closed-source code If you ask the FSF, the LGPL should really be used as a last resort. Unity is not too common yet (a…

I get where you're coming from, I think, but Unity is not related to standards in any way, unlike EME. Unity is just another game engine that can now run on the web. All we did here is help them along the way, just like we help other game engines to port to the web. It is not going to become a standard or part of the browser in any way.

Even with Unity (and Unreal and others) porting to the web, web browsers remain open, while web content (what ported Unity is) was always non-open (since practically all websites are not FOSS).

I agree with you on the other hand that EME would in fact be a danger to the openness of the web.

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#87

Post by devcpp »

VikingCoder wrote: post #61
davexunit wrote: post #34

Mozilla, please stop promoting nonfree software. It would be better to assist in the creation of a free game engine for the web instead of Unity.

I think you're being far too pessimistic. First, build the infrastructure to support amazing things. (Asm.JS, WebGL, WebRTC) Second, encourage people to spend real money developing for it, however they want to. (Unity 5) Third, the open source competitors come around. (???)

And by then it's too late and becomes painfully difficult to go back.

Examples: Linux, FirefoxOS. On the other hand, no DRM in HTML leads to the platform still being free.

It's easy to integrate proprietary solutions but it's incredibly hard to remove them. IT is way easier to not adopt them in the first place. In that regard, proprietary software is similar to AIDS.

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#88

Post by devcpp »

gcp wrote: post #57
beefydude wrote: post #44

Is it just me, or it is a bit hypocritical for Mozilla to be talking about the wonders of the Open Web and then embracing two very proprietary developer platforms to promote Asm.js If they cared about the open web, and they cared about open source, they would be helping open source game engines like Ogre3D and Torque3D. Instead, for the sake of expedience, we see them promoting proprietary components. It was not too…

Is it just me, or it is a bit hypocritical for Mozilla to be talking about the wonders of the Open Web and then embracing two very proprietary developer platforms to promote Asm.js There is no contradiction here, on the contrary (heh!). Mozilla doesn't believe an Open Web precludes proprietary applications. In fact they've strongly argued that the web should be properly standardized so that it's possible for anyone,…

>Mozilla doesn't believe an Open Web precludes proprietary applications

By definition, it must. It's a slippery slope and it's the reason Mozilla is vehemently against EME. The rest of that line sounds like nonsense to me in that context.

>The point has also already been made that this makes it possible for Unity games to run on open platforms without requiring closed source blobs.

Awesome, the joys of running proprietary software on Linux. Ah, why even have a FOSS OS then? Ditch it and get Windows! /s

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#89

Post by devcpp »

azakai wrote: post #86
devcpp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, Mozilla has and does assist in the creation of FOSS game engines and tools Parent comment didn't imply the contrary. "stop promoting nonfree software" doesn't mean "stop only promoting nonfree software". >even the LGPL shows that absolute avoidance is not always the best thing to do regarding closed-source code If you ask the FSF, the LGPL should really be used as a last resort. Unity is not too common yet (a…

I get where you're coming from, I think, but Unity is not related to standards in any way, unlike EME. Unity is just another game engine that can now run on the web. All we did here is help them along the way, just like we help other game engines to port to the web. It is not going to become a standard or part of the browser in any way. Even with Unity (and Unreal and others) porting to the web, web browsers remain o…

Thanks for your reply.

>Unity is not related to standards in any way

I know, I mentioned it. I believe a standard at least has some practical positive impact, unlike the integration of a particular closed platform.

>web content was always non-open

It's true that obfuscated JavaScript makes, in a way, a closed platform, but much less so, in my belief, than straight-up binary code (which Unity delivers and EME enables).

I get your overall point, but it just seems a slippery slope...

Re: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

#90

Post by null_ptr »

mrspeaker wrote: post #22

I do like Unity (especially the component/entity system) but recently I've been enjoying making games in plain ol' JavaScript (2, and 2.5D - granted). Everything is just so open: I don't obfuscate or hide anything, and it's all available via "view source". With an inspector/console you can quickly see how stuff works and start messing around with it. Of course, 99.99% of people just want to play games - but the way I…

You're a dying breed my friend. Most software developers, game developers including, have no appreciation for the technical aspects of their field, and no appreciation for the importance of thoroughly learning and understanding the foundations on which their patchy work is standing - they're glorified product managers and all they care about is the end product they can make a quick buck off of until it's superseded by another, not how well-crafted it is.
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