Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#231

Post by paulddraper » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:17 AM UTC

saurik wrote: post #197

paulddraper wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you examples?

Service Workers, Pointer Events, Web Notifications, WebRTC... I could probably go on, but these are the ones everyone generally has at the top of their heads and which I can just rattle off without thinking about it much (and which have already been mentioned by other people on this very threads, and so absolutely should not require listing :/). The story of IndexedDB vs WebSQL (with Safari developers apparently bein…

Firefox was just the opposite on Indexed DB/WebSQL. History written by the victors.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#232

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:17 AM UTC

mrpippy wrote: post #178

guardiangod wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else mentioned that they don't care about Nvidia and AMD both advocating for Vulkan because I'm personally not interested in the big desktop PCs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Compatibility In addition to Nvidia and AMD, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Qualcomm (!!!), and ARM support Vulkan. Hardware wise, there is absolutely no problem whatsoever.

Intel has only released beta/test drivers for Windows, and this was their statement as of August: The current Plan Of Record is that Intel® is not supporting Vulkan on Windows drivers. The drivers that were made available on Developer.com are intended for Vulkan developers. So, it is expected that some Vulkan drivers may not work for end users. Intel GPUs power at least 50% of Windows PCs, and I'd guess the number is…

Windows 8 and older power more than half of Windows PCs, so Direct3D 12 is no more widely deployed than Vulkan.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#233

Post by om2 » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:17 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #166

om2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're focused on what is best for Vulkan, not what is best for the web.

Care to explain? Why is Vulkan not good for the web?

The best 3D standard for the web is one that can be delivered cross-platform with high performance, high quality, and no need for end-user driver installs. And that can be made safe and secure without losing too much performance. In exploring the issue, we concluded that basing it 100% on Vulkan wasn't the best way to achieve these goals.

The response wasn't about how Vulkan was good for the web, but rather about how a different route might help the Vulkan ecosystem. That may or may not be good, but it has nothing to do with what's good for the web.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#234

Post by MikusR » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:19 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #217

modeless wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "not officially supporting" Vulkan and completely preventing anyone from providing a Vulkan implementation for your platform. Microsoft allows competing APIs to be integrated into their platform at the driver level. Apple does not.

Apple allows you to provide an alternative API on OSX but not on iOS. Microsoft is exactly the same. They do not support custom APIs on Windows Mobile AFAIK.

It's a dead platform with no market-share.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#235

Post by sipos » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:20 AM UTC

om2 wrote: post #132

dman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I have your attention - what can be done to improve the state of Vulkan and OpenGL on the mac - its the single biggest reason for me to ragequit the OSX platform every time I try to give it a shot.

I think you'll want to talk to Apple Developer Relations and see if they can put you in touch with the teams responsible for the GPU-level stuff. We as the browser team can't do much with this feedback.

It is a serious problem for the future of Apple that they have almost completely lost the support of software developers. It used to be that most software developers had MacBook Pros and, the ones that didn't wished they did. Now software developers are generally buying non-Apple machines and running Linux or Windows. In the short term, this is only a tiny market so the loss of sales is irrelevant but, these people are people that other people look to when they are deciding what to buy and, they are people that develop software that other people use. If there is no decent software for Mac OS because none of the developers who would otherwise write it and release it use it anymore, it will make it much harder for other people to use. Both of these are long term effects and, it is too soon to show their effect on sales but, they are important. Since the release of Mac OS X, it has been an attractive platform for developers but, this has completely changed in the last couple of years and, the only reason to use it now is for iOS development IMHO.

Windows has done an awful lot to make itself more attractive to developers recently because they get that it is vital for their future. I hate Windows but, even I have to admit, it has got way way better.

Apple's decision to stop producing things like AirPort Extreme or monitors is a stupid decision in the long run too. Even if these don't make any money on their own, part of what makes Apple an attractive platform to people is that they can buy everything from Apple and it work together so, even if these lose a bit of money, they make sense to do.

There are an awful lot of reasons to not use Mac OS so, it has to get the reasons to use it right and, it is quickly losing them. Fair enough, most of their money comes from selling iPhones but, sales of these will be seriously harmed in the long run if Apple can't sell other systems that integrate well with them. For example, Microsoft would not have to port or update Office on iOS if there wasn't the possibility that it could weaken their hold on the market if there was a Mac and iOS Office alternative. As it is, they would be insane not to support it on iOS but, without Mac OS and Macs, not doing so would be an option and, it would be a serious selling point for Windows phones. Apple's strategy is seriously broken and, it is going to be a serious problem for the company in the long term if it doesn't fix it soon, if it isn't already too late.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#236

Post by om2 » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:20 AM UTC

TD-Linux wrote: post #117

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #39

That API looks potentially more pleasant to use than WebGL, which is a nice surprise given it's purportedly more low-level.

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but it doesn't actually look any more low level. The only lower level thing I see is the texture attachment load/store ops. Can you commit a command buffer more than once? (edit: I realized this API is mostly designed 1:1 with the Metal API, so the docs for that API have filled in most of the missing pieces)

Yes, you can submit a command buffer more than once, with modified parameters.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#237

Post by int_19h » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

acqq wrote: post #164

int_19h wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far as I can see, the argument he's making is that there's already an actively emerging standard for a 3D API outside of the web, so it would make sense if the web also jumped on the same bandwagon, and we could have a single API everywhere. That makes sense to me. What is special about the web that should exclude it from the single API narrative?

The standard in question is still "one of the standards" (and a "me too" one, "the one to end all the previous standards" (1) as far as I see it) not the standard. Remember claims of Flash being the necessary thing on the mobile web, and efficient too? It turned out it was never true. Note there's still no web version of "pure" Vulkan. If it gets to be modified to be less "ridiculously low level" in its web variant,…

I don't think the XKCD reference is appropriate. Vulkan is trying to standardize low-level graphics API, which is a niche in which other existing contenders (notably, D3D 12 and Metal) are explicitly platform-specific, and don't even try to be standards outside of their ecosystem. Thus, it fills a useful niche.

Yes, it doesn't have a web API. That's because there's no existing web API for low-level graphics of this nature. The question is, what this API should look like. It seems natural to answer this question with, "whatever is the standard outside of the web". Now, there isn't one - but Vulkan is the closest that we have.

So, from an engineering perspective, if Apple does want standardization in this area, it would make sense to standardize on Vulkan for both web and non-web applications. Or if they want something else, like e.g. Metal, because Vulkan is somehow inadequate, then they should also submit Metal as a cross-platform standard API outside of the web.

Basically, this is trying to solve the standardization problem at a higher level in the stack, while ignoring the same exact problem one layer lower - despite the fact that there's a similar effort ongoing on that layer. Good design would dictate solving it at the lower level first, then building on that for the higher level.

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#238

Post by vvanders » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:26 AM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #198

vvanders wrote: post #7

Anything that's not based on the Vulkan spec is just a land-grab by Apple to push their own technologies. As someone who spends a lot of time in that space I don't really see what this is solving, WebGL is good enough and anyone serious about performance/compute are going to drop down to native anyway.

> As someone who spends a lot of time in that space I don't really see what this is solving, WebGL is good enough and anyone serious about performance/compute are going to drop down to native anyway. As someone who also spends a lot of time in the GPU space, I really want something newer than WebGL. WebGL is not good enough.

There's plenty of stuff if you want to go native or are you just talking web technologies?

FWIW there's tons of things build on OpenGL ES 2(all of Android for instance). If you're going to write something to run on a wide range of platforms you're either going to deal with least-common denominator(GLES2) or write per-platform layers(like we'd do on consoles/etc).

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#239

Post by ClassyJacket » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:31 AM UTC

"The major platform technologies in this space are Direct3D 12 from Microsoft, Metal from Apple, and Vulkan from the Khronos Group. While these technologies have similar design concepts, unfortunately none are available across all platforms."

Vulkan isn't available on the Mac huh? Yeah Apple, and just who's fault is that??

Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API

#240

Post by sipos » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 1:33 AM UTC

botverse wrote: post #126

fooey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why Apple thinks they're going to have any sway over the people working on 3D graphics. Their hardware support for 3d graphics has been so awful for so long, I have a hard time imagining there's a very big user base they can leverage to get their way. So far as I can tell, what Apple wants here is almost completely irrelevant to the industry.

IMHO you are underestimating the leverage that Apple has given that macs are the tool of choice for most web developers. Apple is probably aware of this and this move looks like an anticipation.

Macs used to be popular with developers but, this has basically changed IMHO. Perhaps they are popular with web designers still but, developers seem to be using Macs no more than the rest of the population to me now. It is Apple's complete lack of support for them that has brought this about IMHO and, I think it will be the end of Apple in the (very) long run (it will be the end of them as anything other than a phone manufacturer sooner and eventually completely I think).