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Would wasm do anything for gaming? I don't expect Doom Eternal running at 165fps in my browser but what would realistically be possible in the coming few years

Would wasm do anything for gaming? I don't expect Doom Eternal running at 165fps in my browser but what would realistically be possible in the coming few years with webgpu and all?

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
There's already 3D games that can run in browsers, if that's what you mean. Unity and Unreal both have HTML5 as a first-class platform, I believe. What webasm will do for games: - Not much for graphics, those are limited by the graphics APIs - Maybe allow number-crunching of 32-bit floats and integers to be faster because you don't have to fight JavaScript's native types being doubles - Reduce overhead because the runtime doesn't have to keep track of its own GC, or things like falling back to a slow interpreted path (which takes some memory, even if the fallback never happens) - Allow stuff like Unity's C# runtime to be more efficient, since it's just running the C# runtime directly in webasm instead of using something like asm.js where it has to sit atop the larger JS runtime and its GC It's gonna be nice. There will be complaints, and backlash, but nobody could have prevented this, and it is a benefit to many use cases.
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Epic deprecated support for exporting to HTML5 from the editor back in 4.23. They barely put any effort into reducing the file binary sizes to make shipping a project on the web viable. Our startup is working on upgraded support for the engine, with plans to support WebGPU in the upcoming Unreal Engine 5. We’re even working on WebXR support, which will play a key part in enabling the metaverse.
udbhavs 5y ago
https://krunker.io https://krunker.io is a pretty popular one made in Unity
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  AFAIK Krunker isn’t made in Unity. They’re even expanding into the web game engine space: https://krunker.io/helpdocs.html https://krunker.io/helpdocs.html

Would wasm do anything for gaming? I don't expect Doom Eternal running at 165fps in my browser but what would realistically be possible in the coming few years with webgpu and all?

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

There's already 3D games that can run in browsers, if that's what you mean. Unity and Unreal both have HTML5 as a first-class platform, I believe. What webasm will do for games: - Not much for graphics, those are limited by the graphics APIs - Maybe allow number-crunching of 32-bit floats and integers to be faster because you don't have to fight JavaScript's native types being doubles - Reduce overhead because the runtime doesn't have to keep track of its own GC, or things like falling back to a slow interpreted path (which takes some memory, even if the fallback never happens) - Allow stuff like Unity's C# runtime to be more efficient, since it's just running the C# runtime directly in webasm instead of using something like asm.js where it has to sit atop the larger JS runtime and its GC It's gonna be nice. There will be complaints, and backlash, but nobody could have prevented this, and it is a benefit to many use cases.

astlouis44 5y ago
Epic deprecated support for exporting to HTML5 from the editor back in 4.23. They barely put any effort into reducing the file binary sizes to make shipping a project on the web viable. Our startup is working on upgraded support for the engine, with plans to support WebGPU in the upcoming Unreal Engine 5. We’re even working on WebXR support, which will play a key part in enabling the metaverse.

udbhavs 5y ago

https://krunker.io https://krunker.io is a pretty popular one made in Unity

meheleventyone 5y ago
AFAIK Krunker isn’t made in Unity. They’re even expanding into the web game engine space: https://krunker.io/helpdocs.html https://krunker.io/helpdocs.html