5 ms·

It takes about 90 seconds to load for me, but once it does, it's buttery smooth on my M1 Pro. Unity's web story is still so bad for many reasons, but the initia

by aroman 5y ago

It takes about 90 seconds to load for me, but once it does, it's buttery smooth on my M1 Pro. Unity's web story is still so bad for many reasons, but the initial load times are a huge one (~15MB of wasm for an empty scene last I checked). They were working on Project Tiny[0] to address exactly this, but they've now paused work on it indefinitely :( Someone please build tools to fix this! [0] https://unity.com/solutions/instant-games https://unity.com/solutions/instant-games

bathtub365 5y ago
When did you last check? What packages were in use? On a toy project built from 2020.3 I have 2.2MB of WASM.
jcun4128 5y ago
It's interesting I have a mid computer (3060/i9/80gb ram/ssd) and with gigabit fiber, it still takes a long time. What is taking a while? Maybe it's request load. Once it loads though wow, the graphics are great, nice little physics effects. Wonder how many online games are like this. Light source/shadow also cool. On subsequent loads it's fast like it's near 80-90% already.
- tpmx 5y ago
  It took 6 seconds for me (pretty similar computer and connection speed). I am however just 6 ms RTT away from its hosting location in Copenhagen, DK. (I'm in southern Sweden.)
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    Okay guess it is just a data transfer thing, I'm in the middle of US.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  80gb of ram is now mid range???
  - tpmx 5y ago
    I'd say 16 GB is mid range at the moment.
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    ah yeah mostly meant the graphics card, 3060 is lower tier of 30 series. in terms of gaming yeah this is a mid-tier computer I want to get a 3090FE just because, but I'm not dropping $4K on that
    - BatFastard 5y ago
      You are in top 1% in RAM, top 2% in processor, and top 2% in GPU. I would not call that mid range. Hell I am running a 980Ti and its still on the top 10%.
      - jcun4128 5y ago
        It's unrelenting ha with the new intel surpassing some Ryzen (at the expense of power/heat) and DDR5... crazy. Yeah I know for dev work can scale down eg. pi zero on a keychain and use cloud resources.
kingcharles 5y ago
I have a $300 laptop and a mobile (cell) Internet connection and it loaded quickly for me and is also butter-smooth. [Note: I also have 156 other tabs currently open in Chrome. And another 30 in Edge. Don't hate me!]
somethoughts 5y ago
Its interesting in that perhaps if Unity gets it right it could fill the functional use case void that has been present ever since the demise of Adobe Flash - rich interactive user experiences within the browser. And done natively with no need for the plugin mess and security holes of Flash. The key would be navigating the feature creep that led to the bulk and security holes of Flash.
- aroman 5y ago
  Totally agree. Unity is definitely in the best position to become the new Flash, but so far, they seem completely uninterested in investing in that future. I can't totally blame them, because the vast majority of their revenue comes from mobile and their services business. Unity already has the bulk, but the security holes shouldn't be as big of an issue given that it's "just a website" and runs in the browser sandbox.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > I can't totally blame them, because the vast majority of their revenue comes from mobile and their services business Seems like they could make a whole new market though. It's more likely that browser support is being held back from Safari/Chrome to keep money flowing to app stores
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Works just fine in Firefox on my aging Moto Z4. Took 45 seconds to load, but then was very smooth.
citizenkeen 5y ago
Meanwhile, Godot 4 should be _editable_ in the browser.
- aroman 5y ago
  Yes, but afaik, the experience of building for the browser as a runtime target for games in Godot is still not much better than Unity, just less bloated. I for one would love it if Godot made web a first-class focus, but it doesn't seem like they are yet.
daredevildave 5y ago
PlayCanvas[0] is the probably the closest "web-first" solution compared to Unity. Used by lots of Snap Games & Instant Games. It's written in JS which means that it's way smaller ~350kB for an empty scene if I recall. [0] https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com
- jordwest 5y ago
  > It's written in JS which means that it's way smaller There's nothing inherently large about WebAssembly, it's just that most practical wasm demos bundle emscripten (essentially an entire OS's standard library) or another very heavy layer in order to interop between the JS and WASM world. As a bit of an experiment to see how small wasm could practically be with a minimal interop layer, I built this little project - the web demo is 90KB of JS + 70KB of wasm: https://github.com/jordwest/cavernos https://github.com/jordwest/cavernos It was heavily inspired by this article which manages even smaller builds: http://cliffle.com/blog/bare-metal-wasm/ http://cliffle.com/blog/bare-metal-wasm/ There's a lot of room for improvement in terms of size optimisation in most projects, but it's still early days and for now most of them just bundle an OS compatibility layer to get things working quickly.
lupire 5y ago
It's smooth, but it uses massive GPU resources even when idling.
Demcox 5y ago
Have an 14" M1 Pro and it takes me about 5-7 second and I have about 250Mbit down. I think you're limited by DL speed. edit The bottleneck is most likely distance too server and RTT

by aroman 5y ago

bathtub365 5y ago

When did you last check? What packages were in use? On a toy project built from 2020.3 I have 2.2MB of WASM.

jcun4128 5y ago

It's interesting I have a mid computer (3060/i9/80gb ram/ssd) and with gigabit fiber, it still takes a long time. What is taking a while? Maybe it's request load. Once it loads though wow, the graphics are great, nice little physics effects. Wonder how many online games are like this. Light source/shadow also cool. On subsequent loads it's fast like it's near 80-90% already.

tpmx 5y ago
It took 6 seconds for me (pretty similar computer and connection speed). I am however just 6 ms RTT away from its hosting location in Copenhagen, DK. (I'm in southern Sweden.)
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Okay guess it is just a data transfer thing, I'm in the middle of US.
londons_explore 5y ago
80gb of ram is now mid range???
- tpmx 5y ago
  I'd say 16 GB is mid range at the moment.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  ah yeah mostly meant the graphics card, 3060 is lower tier of 30 series. in terms of gaming yeah this is a mid-tier computer I want to get a 3090FE just because, but I'm not dropping $4K on that
  - BatFastard 5y ago
    You are in top 1% in RAM, top 2% in processor, and top 2% in GPU. I would not call that mid range. Hell I am running a 980Ti and its still on the top 10%.
    - jcun4128 5y ago
      It's unrelenting ha with the new intel surpassing some Ryzen (at the expense of power/heat) and DDR5... crazy. Yeah I know for dev work can scale down eg. pi zero on a keychain and use cloud resources.

kingcharles 5y ago

I have a $300 laptop and a mobile (cell) Internet connection and it loaded quickly for me and is also butter-smooth. [Note: I also have 156 other tabs currently open in Chrome. And another 30 in Edge. Don't hate me!]

somethoughts 5y ago

Its interesting in that perhaps if Unity gets it right it could fill the functional use case void that has been present ever since the demise of Adobe Flash - rich interactive user experiences within the browser. And done natively with no need for the plugin mess and security holes of Flash. The key would be navigating the feature creep that led to the bulk and security holes of Flash.

aroman 5y ago
Totally agree. Unity is definitely in the best position to become the new Flash, but so far, they seem completely uninterested in investing in that future. I can't totally blame them, because the vast majority of their revenue comes from mobile and their services business. Unity already has the bulk, but the security holes shouldn't be as big of an issue given that it's "just a website" and runs in the browser sandbox.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  > I can't totally blame them, because the vast majority of their revenue comes from mobile and their services business Seems like they could make a whole new market though. It's more likely that browser support is being held back from Safari/Chrome to keep money flowing to app stores

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Works just fine in Firefox on my aging Moto Z4. Took 45 seconds to load, but then was very smooth.

citizenkeen 5y ago

Meanwhile, Godot 4 should be _editable_ in the browser.

aroman 5y ago
Yes, but afaik, the experience of building for the browser as a runtime target for games in Godot is still not much better than Unity, just less bloated. I for one would love it if Godot made web a first-class focus, but it doesn't seem like they are yet.

daredevildave 5y ago

PlayCanvas[0] is the probably the closest "web-first" solution compared to Unity. Used by lots of Snap Games & Instant Games. It's written in JS which means that it's way smaller ~350kB for an empty scene if I recall. [0] https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com

jordwest 5y ago
> It's written in JS which means that it's way smaller There's nothing inherently large about WebAssembly, it's just that most practical wasm demos bundle emscripten (essentially an entire OS's standard library) or another very heavy layer in order to interop between the JS and WASM world. As a bit of an experiment to see how small wasm could practically be with a minimal interop layer, I built this little project - the web demo is 90KB of JS + 70KB of wasm: https://github.com/jordwest/cavernos https://github.com/jordwest/cavernos It was heavily inspired by this article which manages even smaller builds: http://cliffle.com/blog/bare-metal-wasm/ http://cliffle.com/blog/bare-metal-wasm/ There's a lot of room for improvement in terms of size optimisation in most projects, but it's still early days and for now most of them just bundle an OS compatibility layer to get things working quickly.

lupire 5y ago

It's smooth, but it uses massive GPU resources even when idling.

Demcox 5y ago

Have an 14" M1 Pro and it takes me about 5-7 second and I have about 250Mbit down. I think you're limited by DL speed. edit The bottleneck is most likely distance too server and RTT