Earlier quoted context omitted.
Planning and actually releasing is not the same thing.
They HAVE released drivers, I've used them on both Windows and Linux.
For developers, to try them out, not to the overall public.
Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
481–490 of 650 posts
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox was just the opposite on Indexed DB/WebSQL. History written by the victors.
WebSQL was never going to be picked up by Microsoft either: it was a WebKit-only concept that was doomed from the start.
It was a SQLite only concept, not so much a WebKit only concept. Of course defining the API for years to come based on the quirks of one particular implementation was terrible, even if somewhat convenient at the time.
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#483An obvious use case for this API is to allow native games that use Vulkan to be ported to the Web without a proprietary abstraction layer. (The abstraction layer would be in the emscripten standard library rather than the game engine.) But is this a legitimate use case that someone actually needs?
I can see two views here. Firstly, that as the open standard, Vulkan should have a privileged position and be supported from the Web side, to make the Vulkan -> Web -> Native abstraction layer standard, small and efficient. As a developer you would just implement the necessary algorithms for your application once, using Vulkan.
The alternative view is that Vulkan is just too low level and doesn't fit in the web security model. Then, the purpose of WebGPU is not to implement Vulkan in Javascript. Instead, it's another target in addition to the existing three: Apple, Microsoft, Kronos, and web. To get maximum performance, developers must write an application-specific, high level platform abstraction layer, and implement that interface for each supported platform.
It seems to me that this article is of the latter view, especially as it doesn't put Metal in a strategically weaker position than Vulkan.
If you don't need state of the art or original rendering techniques and algorithms, I think there is already a high level abstraction which is compatible with the web: OpenGL ES 2, and soon OpenGL ES 3. (WebGL & WebGL 2).
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#484Is it maybe time to step back and think about whether having a low-level 3D graphics API in the browser makes any sense at all? I know, we HAVE to run every conceivable thing out of the browser and on Javascript possible. But just maybe building native apps would be easier than trying to shoehorn an API into browser specs, where not only will you have to deal with hardware variations, there will be the inevitable incompatibilities between the implementations by each browser vendor.
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Provide a source that Apple actively prevents it. Developers can ask users for their admin password, sudo to root and largely do whatever they want including adding kernel extensions and drivers.
kext's must be signed now, Apple can freely revoke developer certs and block them if they so desire.
But they only use these power to shut out malware. Not to nix software they don't like.
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Firefox argued that WebSQL was a terrible idea that shouldn't become a standard, and the other vendors eventually agreed, including some that were already shipping it.
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil's advocate: Isn't a big focus of web tech the goal of supporting multiple backends for everything? If a new platform wants to support WebGPU but not Vulkan (ex: XBone or PS4) it should be not just theoretically possible, but actively supported by the design of the Web spec.
Good point. But, that's assuming that it's not possible to write a wrapper on top of DX (for Xbone) that proves a Vulkan API. It's already been shown to be possible to do something similar, with MoltenVK. The ball would be in Microsoft's court for this one.
> But, that's assuming that it's not possible to write a wrapper on top of DX (for Xbone) that proves a Vulkan API.
Is this not how Vulkan on Windows works? Given how many OpenGL drivers were just shims over DirectX in the past, I wouldnt be surprised if the same course was charted there.
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#488Related reading re. Vulkan "What a WebGL2 successor could look like and why it can’t be WebVulkan" - https://floooh.github.io/2016/08/13/webgl-next.html See also the the author's sketch of a next-gen web graphics API on top of WebGL ( https://floooh.github.io/2016/10/24/altai.html ) which is (perhaps unsurprisingl) broadly similar to the sketch given the article (minus command queues, shader libraries, ...).
Everyone here (including me) is upset that Apple are refusing to support Vulkan (or even improve their existing OpenGL support). They haven't even made a public statement. And now we get the news that they are working on another API. It doesn't really matter that the new API is targeting a completely different market to Vulkan. It doesn't really matter that a WebVulkan can't really exist in the first place. It doesn'…
And you're going to derail every thread until you get it?
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#489For all arguing "to use Vulcan": the API proposed is a high-level API which could be implemented on top of Vulcan. Or any other lowlevel API like DirectX or Metal. When designing an API, you have to take the characteristics of the calling language into respect. Especially when you are trying to achieve the highest possible performance. You can define highlevel APIs, which try to minimize the amount of computation in…
> assuming that the client can implement abstractions more efficiently as they are more tuned to his needs.
off topic, but who is the client?
Re: Apple proposes new web 3D graphics API
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a dead platform with no market-share.
Latest results of the so-called dead platform--"iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch Set All-Time Records" http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/apple-reports-record-f...
I think the parent claim is that Windows Mobile is a dead plarform, which, it pretty much is, after the nokia fiasco.