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The difference is this one plugin is capable of covering much more ground than Unity3D alone. Once it's there, nothing stopping one from porting, say, id Tech,

The difference is this one plugin is capable of covering much more ground than Unity3D alone. Once it's there, nothing stopping one from porting, say, id Tech, Unreal, Frostbite, RenderWare, OGRE, Avalanche, Crystal, CryEngine, EGO, Source, etc. to NaCl and running it in the same plugin. Say what you will about Google's strategy, it opens up quite a few possibilites.

azakai 15y ago
> The difference is this one plugin is capable of covering much more ground than Unity3D alone. Once it's there, nothing stopping one from porting, say, id Tech, Unreal, Frostbite, RenderWare, OGRE, Avalanche, Crystal, CryEngine, EGO, Source, etc. to NaCl and running it in the same plugin. That's already possible with the Flash plugin using Alchemy. There are demos of several of those game engines running in it. It is also possible to compile those technologies to JavaScript and run them without plugins at all (using Mandreel or Emscripten), but the experience would be less uniform (results would be different in different browsers), which is probably why it hasn't been done yet.
- CyruzDraxs 15y ago
  Emscripten is not a viable alternative. The Javascript it generates is too slow for performance intensive things, which is the whole point of NaCl. Flash is too unstable.
  - azakai 15y ago
    > Emscripten is not a viable alternative. The Javascript it generates is too slow for performance intensive things Is 3-4X slower than native code "too slow"? Those are the results right now. And it will be much faster as JS engines continue to improve.
    - implicit 15y ago
      Absolutely. Think about it this way: "4x slower than native code" means that 80% of the CPU's cycles are being spent on the platform. With NaCl, it becomes possible to instead spend most of those cycles on extra application richness without sacrificing the customer experience by requiring an installer or plugin.
      - azakai 15y ago
        That can be true, but based on my experience in the game industry it isn't necessarily the case. Often a game will be GPU-bound, in which case the JS, Flash and NaCl versions will all have the same bottleneck, GPU shaders (in fact for this reason more and more is done in scripting languages in game engines these days). If that is the case, you might as well use JS, since it will run in many more places than Flash or NaCl. But again, there are situations where you are CPU bound, and in that case CPU speed does matter - you are very correct in those cases. Currently JS is indeed at a disadvantage compared to NaCl in that area, however, I believe that it will match it in time (through a combination of API additions like Intel's RiverTrail, and further improvements to JS engines like static analysis). The real question is then, will NaCl fix its problems (portability, adoption in browsers other than Chrome) before JS fixes its problem (speed). My bet is on JS.
        CyruzDraxs 15y ago
        Yes, but NaCl provides direct access to GPU interface libraries. You can code for OpenGL directly, rather than running your graphics code through several layers of abstraction, slowing it down exponentially along the way. There is, to some extent; hardware acceleration for canvas. But I don't expect that to be at all comparable to native OpenGL for awhile yet. JS has certainly had some significant advances in speed over the last few years, but there's only so much optimization you can do. It's still running in a VM, so there will always be that overhead. Another important thing to consider is that the native API will always have to exist before a Javascript abstraction can. Many triple-a titles will use brand new GPU features to sell the newest line of graphics cards. That won't work if they are making a browser game and the required interface to do those things doesn't exist yet. Javascript will always be chasing the tail of native.
- willvarfar 15y ago
  I've worked extensively with Alchemy and Haxe (which can use Alchemy op-codes for near-direct memory access). And, recently, started with NACL. Games are extremely performance-intensive. Its simply crazy to pick a platform that is any factor slower when you have a faster alternative to hand. NACL is a whole new level of possible. I think its going to succeed technically where Flash and plugins failed.
  - azakai 15y ago
    I don't think there is any disagreement about the speed. NaCl will be faster than Flash and other options. But consider that Alchemy will run in 98% of web browsers (because that is how much range Flash has), while NaCl will only run in Chrome. So there is a difference of about 4X in market share. I'm not saying Alchemy is a perfect solution. Each option in this area (Alchemy, NaCl, JS) has different advantages and disadvantages.

azakai 15y ago

> The difference is this one plugin is capable of covering much more ground than Unity3D alone. Once it's there, nothing stopping one from porting, say, id Tech, Unreal, Frostbite, RenderWare, OGRE, Avalanche, Crystal, CryEngine, EGO, Source, etc. to NaCl and running it in the same plugin. That's already possible with the Flash plugin using Alchemy. There are demos of several of those game engines running in it. It is also possible to compile those technologies to JavaScript and run them without plugins at all (using Mandreel or Emscripten), but the experience would be less uniform (results would be different in different browsers), which is probably why it hasn't been done yet.

CyruzDraxs 15y ago
Emscripten is not a viable alternative. The Javascript it generates is too slow for performance intensive things, which is the whole point of NaCl. Flash is too unstable.
- azakai 15y ago
  > Emscripten is not a viable alternative. The Javascript it generates is too slow for performance intensive things Is 3-4X slower than native code "too slow"? Those are the results right now. And it will be much faster as JS engines continue to improve.
  - implicit 15y ago
    Absolutely. Think about it this way: "4x slower than native code" means that 80% of the CPU's cycles are being spent on the platform. With NaCl, it becomes possible to instead spend most of those cycles on extra application richness without sacrificing the customer experience by requiring an installer or plugin.
    - azakai 15y ago
      That can be true, but based on my experience in the game industry it isn't necessarily the case. Often a game will be GPU-bound, in which case the JS, Flash and NaCl versions will all have the same bottleneck, GPU shaders (in fact for this reason more and more is done in scripting languages in game engines these days). If that is the case, you might as well use JS, since it will run in many more places than Flash or NaCl. But again, there are situations where you are CPU bound, and in that case CPU speed does matter - you are very correct in those cases. Currently JS is indeed at a disadvantage compared to NaCl in that area, however, I believe that it will match it in time (through a combination of API additions like Intel's RiverTrail, and further improvements to JS engines like static analysis). The real question is then, will NaCl fix its problems (portability, adoption in browsers other than Chrome) before JS fixes its problem (speed). My bet is on JS.
      - CyruzDraxs 15y ago
        Yes, but NaCl provides direct access to GPU interface libraries. You can code for OpenGL directly, rather than running your graphics code through several layers of abstraction, slowing it down exponentially along the way. There is, to some extent; hardware acceleration for canvas. But I don't expect that to be at all comparable to native OpenGL for awhile yet. JS has certainly had some significant advances in speed over the last few years, but there's only so much optimization you can do. It's still running in a VM, so there will always be that overhead. Another important thing to consider is that the native API will always have to exist before a Javascript abstraction can. Many triple-a titles will use brand new GPU features to sell the newest line of graphics cards. That won't work if they are making a browser game and the required interface to do those things doesn't exist yet. Javascript will always be chasing the tail of native.
willvarfar 15y ago
I've worked extensively with Alchemy and Haxe (which can use Alchemy op-codes for near-direct memory access). And, recently, started with NACL. Games are extremely performance-intensive. Its simply crazy to pick a platform that is any factor slower when you have a faster alternative to hand. NACL is a whole new level of possible. I think its going to succeed technically where Flash and plugins failed.
- azakai 15y ago
  I don't think there is any disagreement about the speed. NaCl will be faster than Flash and other options. But consider that Alchemy will run in 98% of web browsers (because that is how much range Flash has), while NaCl will only run in Chrome. So there is a difference of about 4X in market share. I'm not saying Alchemy is a perfect solution. Each option in this area (Alchemy, NaCl, JS) has different advantages and disadvantages.