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What exactly are the limitations that prevent this game from working in Firefox to the point where they need a "please download Chrome" banner? Just curious, I

by thurn 6y ago

What exactly are the limitations that prevent this game from working in Firefox to the point where they need a "please download Chrome" banner? Just curious, I thought WebAssembly and WebGL were pretty competitive these days.

Waterluvian 6y ago
FWIW I can’t for the life of me get WebGL to work on Firefox anywhere near as good as it works on Chrome. GTS 1050 on Ubuntu.
vbernat 6y ago
I am also wondering. On my Firefox, it seems to run smoothly.
- dengr1065 6y ago
  I completely agree - 99% of the time, I play (and test) the game on Firefox. It looks like it runs there even better than on Chromium. I've tried to tell the main developer that it 100% works, but the badge is still there; you can ignore it.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    What device are you on? I have an issue which only happens on Firefox on Mac where WebRender is disabled by default, causing massive drops in FPS. I think it works fine on Windows though.
    - dengr1065 6y ago
      A laptop with Intel Core i5-6200U (Linux, X11).
dom96 6y ago
This game appears to be written in JS. I've been working on a browser game recently myself and there is definitely some bottlenecks when it comes JS execution in Firefox, especially on Linux.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted since it's completely true. Making a cross-browser game is hard. For regular apps it hardly matters but when you need to run complicated logic 60 times a second differences between browsers and even nuances in implementations between platforms (Windows vs Mac, desktop vs mobile) start to matter. And then we have all the rendering and sound caveats.
Kiro 6y ago
This is one issue making my WebGL app unusable in Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025
wtracy 6y ago
Chrome seems to have a more full-featured shim layer for handling older graphics drivers. I have a netbook that Firefox won't even try to launch WebGL on. Chrome seems to run WebGL just fine, though shaders with more than about twelve instructions fall off a performance cliff. (Add one multiplication operation over the limit, and performance decreases twentyfold. Keep the new line, but delete any other single line of code in the shader, and performance goes back to normal.)
- Uehreka 6y ago
  That’s bananas. I write a lot of complex WebGL shaders, I had never heard that some devices have such a clear (and early) performance cliff.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    So what is the issue in this game? I presume the banner is there for a reason. I see a lot of complaints about it and if it really was something easily fixed someone should make a PR.
  - Jasper_ 6y ago
    I imagine it's doing the SwiftShader fallback, and the JIT tends to have a few specializations for "quick" shaders. Would be curious what's going on, though.
  - wtracy 6y ago
    If you're curious: I don't have the machine in front of me, but it's an eee PC with I believe an Intel n550 CPU and an Intel GMA 3150 graphics chipset. I saw this behavior under a recent version of Ubuntu, probably 19.10. (The "fast" framerate was something like one frame very 1-2 seconds, which was acceptable for running an image filter. The slow framerate was one frame every 30-40 seconds, during which Chrome locked up completely.)
- CraftThatBlock 6y ago
  Not sure how true this is, since both Chrome and Firefox use ANGLE as their default WebGL backend (at least on Windows). https://github.com/google/angle https://github.com/google/angle
Kiro 6y ago
It could also be more indirect issues not necessary related to performance or rendering. Here are a couple commits for fixed issues in Firefox: https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/d2903f5606d28567859c84e2a1f2c4817ccc4492 https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/d2903f5606d285678... https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/bf8b3253b97fb5d101c57c7325e1d3216e30188d https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/bf8b3253b97fb5d10...
Krasnol 6y ago
GTX 660 on Win10 here while running Elite Dangerous parallel to it: no issues at all.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
ctrl+left click doesn't allow me mass select stuff. The speed doesn't seem slow at all though
m463 6y ago
maybe because there are a lot of google links on the page: googleoptimize googletagmanager doubleclick
rusinov 6y ago
Same, works fine in Safari 14.0.

by thurn 6y ago

Waterluvian 6y ago

FWIW I can’t for the life of me get WebGL to work on Firefox anywhere near as good as it works on Chrome. GTS 1050 on Ubuntu.

vbernat 6y ago

I am also wondering. On my Firefox, it seems to run smoothly.

dengr1065 6y ago
I completely agree - 99% of the time, I play (and test) the game on Firefox. It looks like it runs there even better than on Chromium. I've tried to tell the main developer that it 100% works, but the badge is still there; you can ignore it.
- Kiro 6y ago
  What device are you on? I have an issue which only happens on Firefox on Mac where WebRender is disabled by default, causing massive drops in FPS. I think it works fine on Windows though.
  - dengr1065 6y ago
    A laptop with Intel Core i5-6200U (Linux, X11).

dom96 6y ago

This game appears to be written in JS. I've been working on a browser game recently myself and there is definitely some bottlenecks when it comes JS execution in Firefox, especially on Linux.

Kiro 6y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted since it's completely true. Making a cross-browser game is hard. For regular apps it hardly matters but when you need to run complicated logic 60 times a second differences between browsers and even nuances in implementations between platforms (Windows vs Mac, desktop vs mobile) start to matter. And then we have all the rendering and sound caveats.

Kiro 6y ago

This is one issue making my WebGL app unusable in Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025

wtracy 6y ago

Chrome seems to have a more full-featured shim layer for handling older graphics drivers. I have a netbook that Firefox won't even try to launch WebGL on. Chrome seems to run WebGL just fine, though shaders with more than about twelve instructions fall off a performance cliff. (Add one multiplication operation over the limit, and performance decreases twentyfold. Keep the new line, but delete any other single line of code in the shader, and performance goes back to normal.)

Uehreka 6y ago
That’s bananas. I write a lot of complex WebGL shaders, I had never heard that some devices have such a clear (and early) performance cliff.
- Kiro 6y ago
  So what is the issue in this game? I presume the banner is there for a reason. I see a lot of complaints about it and if it really was something easily fixed someone should make a PR.
- Jasper_ 6y ago
  I imagine it's doing the SwiftShader fallback, and the JIT tends to have a few specializations for "quick" shaders. Would be curious what's going on, though.
- wtracy 6y ago
  If you're curious: I don't have the machine in front of me, but it's an eee PC with I believe an Intel n550 CPU and an Intel GMA 3150 graphics chipset. I saw this behavior under a recent version of Ubuntu, probably 19.10. (The "fast" framerate was something like one frame very 1-2 seconds, which was acceptable for running an image filter. The slow framerate was one frame every 30-40 seconds, during which Chrome locked up completely.)
CraftThatBlock 6y ago
Not sure how true this is, since both Chrome and Firefox use ANGLE as their default WebGL backend (at least on Windows). https://github.com/google/angle https://github.com/google/angle

Kiro 6y ago

It could also be more indirect issues not necessary related to performance or rendering. Here are a couple commits for fixed issues in Firefox: https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/d2903f5606d28567859c84e2a1f2c4817ccc4492 https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/d2903f5606d285678... https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/bf8b3253b97fb5d101c57c7325e1d3216e30188d https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io/commit/bf8b3253b97fb5d10...

Krasnol 6y ago

GTX 660 on Win10 here while running Elite Dangerous parallel to it: no issues at all.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

ctrl+left click doesn't allow me mass select stuff. The speed doesn't seem slow at all though

m463 6y ago

maybe because there are a lot of google links on the page: googleoptimize googletagmanager doubleclick

rusinov 6y ago

Same, works fine in Safari 14.0.