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How does this sentiment align with the advent of WebGPU?

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
WebGPU is little more than a laboratory experiment right now. There are probably no industry implementations (game/graphics engine, visualisers, etc). Computer graphics is particularly industry-driven—consider the proportion of game devs who present at SIGGRAPH versus academics. I give it at least a decade before WebGPU sees any meaningful market share.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  Bevy Engine (https://bevyengine.org/ https://bevyengine.org/) is built ontop of wgpu (https://wgpu.rs/ https://wgpu.rs/) and runs in-browser today (https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/ https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/) Bevy is the second highest starred game engine on GitHub's Game Engine topic: https://github.com/topics/game-engine https://github.com/topics/game-engine I definitely agree that it's still new, but I don't feel like it's quite as far out as you're implying. A year or two at best IMO?
  - delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
    GitHub stars aren't really an accurate indicator of market share. I've previously starred it, too, but I've never used it. I'd like to draw attention to the last phrase in my comment: > WebGPU sees any meaningful market share I am comparing anything implemented in WebGPU to existing games that are played today by gamers. Finally, it's using Rust, and the majority of graphics + game engines are written in C++ (with a minority in Java and C#). Despite the safety and tooling benefits, moving to Rust is still a change that companies have to implement and educate their developers on, which is going to take a lot of time. And game dev companies are fairly slow at adopting new language standards (even if they adopt new graphics APIs and hardware fairly quickly, e.g. ray-tracing). I don't quite share your optimism; sorry.
    - SeanAnderson 3y ago
      Well, I'm writing a game intended for the web using Bevy right now, so I'm clearly biased :) There are also some industry veterans building games using it. https://www.mobygames.com/person/6108/brandon-reinhart/ https://www.mobygames.com/person/6108/brandon-reinhart/ to name one specifically. You can just use FFI if you want to integrate C crates with Rust, it's not that bad. Figma uses a mixture of Rust and C++ in the WASM that they ship. Guess we'll see what the future holds.
      - delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
        All the best. I'll be happy to eat my words. Rust is a great language (although I don't use it myself), and WebGPU is pretty interesting as well.
- Jasper_ 3y ago
  Chrome is switching to using Dawn (Google's WebGPU implementation) for its Skia backend. This would render all UI elements across Chrome using WebGPU. You can find plenty of projects that are using WebGPU today. In the web space, BabylonJS has had plenty of experience using it already, and you can run several demos [0]. Offline, there are games like Veloren [1] that use it exclusively as a graphics backend. Plus a number of other projects I can't talk about yet. It's pretty obvious WebGPU is not going to replace any big engine's custom-built graphics backend, but it's already pretty capable, and I think it's going to be a good place to start for beginners for a long time. [0] https://github.com/Popov72/OceanDemo https://github.com/Popov72/OceanDemo [1] https://veloren.net/ https://veloren.net/
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >I give it at least a decade before WebGPU sees any meaningful market share. sounds like a great time to break in if I was still a student :). Real shame, I was around that time for Vulkan back in college, but never truly followed through.
kllrnohj 3y ago
WebGPU needs to cater to the lowest common denominator so it's unlikely to replace DX12/Vulkan/Metal in the demanding usages. It's always going to lag behind on features, capabilities, and performance. But for the long tail of image filters, video effects, more graphically basic games - yeah, it's a great fit there. Probably.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  To put it in perspective, WebGPU 1.0, that 6 years later is still only available on Chrome, is the lowest common denominator from 2015 GPU hardware.
pjmlp 3y ago
WebGPU is a browser API. Anyone making use of it outside the browser is making themselves a disservice by not using a middleware engine instead. WebGPU as specified cannot do many modern features, and naturally making use of extensions in wgpu or Dawn, makes the code non portable.

WebGPU is little more than a laboratory experiment right now. There are probably no industry implementations (game/graphics engine, visualisers, etc). Computer graphics is particularly industry-driven—consider the proportion of game devs who present at SIGGRAPH versus academics. I give it at least a decade before WebGPU sees any meaningful market share.

SeanAnderson 3y ago
Bevy Engine (https://bevyengine.org/ https://bevyengine.org/) is built ontop of wgpu (https://wgpu.rs/ https://wgpu.rs/) and runs in-browser today (https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/ https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/) Bevy is the second highest starred game engine on GitHub's Game Engine topic: https://github.com/topics/game-engine https://github.com/topics/game-engine I definitely agree that it's still new, but I don't feel like it's quite as far out as you're implying. A year or two at best IMO?
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  GitHub stars aren't really an accurate indicator of market share. I've previously starred it, too, but I've never used it. I'd like to draw attention to the last phrase in my comment: > WebGPU sees any meaningful market share I am comparing anything implemented in WebGPU to existing games that are played today by gamers. Finally, it's using Rust, and the majority of graphics + game engines are written in C++ (with a minority in Java and C#). Despite the safety and tooling benefits, moving to Rust is still a change that companies have to implement and educate their developers on, which is going to take a lot of time. And game dev companies are fairly slow at adopting new language standards (even if they adopt new graphics APIs and hardware fairly quickly, e.g. ray-tracing). I don't quite share your optimism; sorry.
  - SeanAnderson 3y ago
    Well, I'm writing a game intended for the web using Bevy right now, so I'm clearly biased :) There are also some industry veterans building games using it. https://www.mobygames.com/person/6108/brandon-reinhart/ https://www.mobygames.com/person/6108/brandon-reinhart/ to name one specifically. You can just use FFI if you want to integrate C crates with Rust, it's not that bad. Figma uses a mixture of Rust and C++ in the WASM that they ship. Guess we'll see what the future holds.
    - delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
      All the best. I'll be happy to eat my words. Rust is a great language (although I don't use it myself), and WebGPU is pretty interesting as well.
Jasper_ 3y ago
Chrome is switching to using Dawn (Google's WebGPU implementation) for its Skia backend. This would render all UI elements across Chrome using WebGPU. You can find plenty of projects that are using WebGPU today. In the web space, BabylonJS has had plenty of experience using it already, and you can run several demos [0]. Offline, there are games like Veloren [1] that use it exclusively as a graphics backend. Plus a number of other projects I can't talk about yet. It's pretty obvious WebGPU is not going to replace any big engine's custom-built graphics backend, but it's already pretty capable, and I think it's going to be a good place to start for beginners for a long time. [0] https://github.com/Popov72/OceanDemo https://github.com/Popov72/OceanDemo [1] https://veloren.net/ https://veloren.net/
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>I give it at least a decade before WebGPU sees any meaningful market share. sounds like a great time to break in if I was still a student :). Real shame, I was around that time for Vulkan back in college, but never truly followed through.

kllrnohj 3y ago

WebGPU needs to cater to the lowest common denominator so it's unlikely to replace DX12/Vulkan/Metal in the demanding usages. It's always going to lag behind on features, capabilities, and performance. But for the long tail of image filters, video effects, more graphically basic games - yeah, it's a great fit there. Probably.

pjmlp 3y ago
To put it in perspective, WebGPU 1.0, that 6 years later is still only available on Chrome, is the lowest common denominator from 2015 GPU hardware.

pjmlp 3y ago

WebGPU is a browser API. Anyone making use of it outside the browser is making themselves a disservice by not using a middleware engine instead. WebGPU as specified cannot do many modern features, and naturally making use of extensions in wgpu or Dawn, makes the code non portable.