4 ms·

Show HN: Unreal Engine 5 in WebGPU

63 points by astlouis44 2y ago

astlouis44 2y ago
Hey everyone, here is a link to the demo if you'd like to try it out. Please note that this version runs without sound, and is CPU-intensive. We'll be enhancing performance and the overall quality of the experience in future updates, as well as improving load times. Here's a link to where you can try out the demo. Feedback is much appreciated! https://lyra.tiwsamples.com/ https://lyra.tiwsamples.com/
- pjmlp 2y ago
  And as usual, Chrome died, both on Windows and Android.
- gpm 2y ago
  Looking at the console I quickly get "No WebGPU support; not starting" (which is correct when I check the compatibility matrix, I'm on non-nightly firefox) but the page just keeps saying "Loading" forever. Even for a demo it would be nice to surface that error to the user so they know not to wait around waiting for some potentially giant game to load (which was my first assumption). Edit: Tried again in Chrome, the game loaded after awhile, but no 3d geometry rendered. I had a HUD with crosshairs, scoreboard, ammo. The game said it started. I could see another players name moving around, and responding to my cursor movements as if I was supposed to be in a 3d environment. Clicking when my mouse was a bit below their name seemingly killed them (or maybe that was a coincidence). But this was all just on top of a black screen. On a M1 mac if that helps at all.
  - warvstar 2y ago
    Thanks for the detailed report! We have recently received similar reports on M1 and M2 chips and we are going to investigate further. Also, you're right about the loading screen for unsupported browsers, that is something we will add ASAP. Thanks again!
- porphyra 2y ago
  On Chrome for Linux you'll need > The chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu flag must be enabled (not enable-webgpu-developer-features). Linux experimental support also requires launching the browser with --enable-features=Vulkan. Nightly Firefox should have it already. https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#implementation-status https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#...
- singularity2001 2y ago
  FF: event is undefined Chrome: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 ()
malux85 2y ago
This is awesome, I love using 3D engines for visualisation and I’m already writing my own GPU shaders to visualise electron density grids for example - having a high performance runtime I can hook into would be such a big help. Especially if it had a high performance (60fps+) particle system that can handle 10s millions particles
- kranke155 2y ago
  Press X for doubt that you can run 10s millions of particles in unreal on the browser.
  - moonmagick 2y ago
    If it’s fully on GPU that should be tenable, regardless of browser or not
  - malux85 2y ago
    If you use shaders and are smart about GPU data structures you can do it, I have got 5-6 million particles running smoothly (60fps) in my own testing which is just a hacky weekend mash with no optimization, here's a blog post of someone who went into detail on something similar here: https://dgerrells.com/blog/how-fast-is-javascript-simulating-20-000-000-particles https://dgerrells.com/blog/how-fast-is-javascript-simulating... From the blog post: > This version can hit 20m particles on on M1 mac at around 20fps on battery life. That is pretty crazy for pure javascript. My desktop can do about 30m at the same fps. I asked a friend who had a 32 core CPU to test it and they hit about 40m which is almost enough to fill five 4k displays. Having a full engine toolkit at my disposal with mature sytems for geometry, physics, particles, templating etc would make me much more productive than having to write the shaders myself, even if the engine has some overhead. My comment above was a wish list, I know I'm asking for a lot, but I make scientific visualization software so I like to push at the edge!
    - kranke155 2y ago
      I’m sorry, I am dumb.
programmarchy 2y ago
Wow, that's an amazing achievement. At one point, UE had an option to build for HTML5, which was later deprecated and offloaded to a community fork [1] which was abandoned. So I thought it'd never happen. Well done! [1] https://github.com/UnrealEngineHTML5 https://github.com/UnrealEngineHTML5
- NathanFlurry 2y ago
  A friend and I forked UE4 a while back and stripped all of the bloat to try and get it running well on a shit-tier Chromebook. We only stripped it down to 30 mb, but the end result (physics + terrain) ran way smoother than any Unity game I've played on that ToasterBook. Plot twist: people stop writing casual games in Unity and switch to Unreal to target low-end hardware. Needless to say: as someone who spent my teens and early 20s working on multiplayer web games, I'm incredibly excited for this.
  - ffhhj 2y ago
    The problem is the editor, it still needs too much RAM when Unity doesn't, and that makes people drop it. Whether UE reduced the bloat indies would move instantly.
    - spywaregorilla 2y ago
      Oh please. Any gaming laptop can run the ue5 editor.
      - ffhhj 2y ago
        Yeah, I guess Epic expects indies to have plenty of resources. They can keep waiting for mass adoption of UE.
        spywaregorilla 2y ago
        Epic probably does expect the indie devs to have laptops, yes.
zxilly 2y ago
I opened the demo on my phone with chrome canary. It just crashed my browser.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jamesu 2y ago
Great to see more projects actually battle testing WebGPU. I've been working on porting an existing engine to WebGPU and personally I think it's one of the worst GPU APIs I have had the pleasure of working with. Perhaps if we see more practical real-world use-cases with real feedback we'll see some improvement in a later update.
- thatgamer44 2y ago
  Agreed, most studios would want to see maturity of the API, and that initial issues are ironed out. I’d hazard a guess that WebGPU is going to usher in a new golden era of browser games, especially now that features such as compute shaders are on the table.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I seriously doubt it, WebGL 2.0 so far failed to deliver something like Infinity Blade from 2011, the flagship game of iOS mobile gaming with OpenGL ES 3.0.

63 points by astlouis44 2y ago

Hey everyone, here is a link to the demo if you'd like to try it out. Please note that this version runs without sound, and is CPU-intensive. We'll be enhancing performance and the overall quality of the experience in future updates, as well as improving load times. Here's a link to where you can try out the demo. Feedback is much appreciated! https://lyra.tiwsamples.com/ https://lyra.tiwsamples.com/

pjmlp 2y ago
And as usual, Chrome died, both on Windows and Android.
gpm 2y ago
Looking at the console I quickly get "No WebGPU support; not starting" (which is correct when I check the compatibility matrix, I'm on non-nightly firefox) but the page just keeps saying "Loading" forever. Even for a demo it would be nice to surface that error to the user so they know not to wait around waiting for some potentially giant game to load (which was my first assumption). Edit: Tried again in Chrome, the game loaded after awhile, but no 3d geometry rendered. I had a HUD with crosshairs, scoreboard, ammo. The game said it started. I could see another players name moving around, and responding to my cursor movements as if I was supposed to be in a 3d environment. Clicking when my mouse was a bit below their name seemingly killed them (or maybe that was a coincidence). But this was all just on top of a black screen. On a M1 mac if that helps at all.
- warvstar 2y ago
  Thanks for the detailed report! We have recently received similar reports on M1 and M2 chips and we are going to investigate further. Also, you're right about the loading screen for unsupported browsers, that is something we will add ASAP. Thanks again!
porphyra 2y ago
On Chrome for Linux you'll need > The chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu flag must be enabled (not enable-webgpu-developer-features). Linux experimental support also requires launching the browser with --enable-features=Vulkan. Nightly Firefox should have it already. https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#implementation-status https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#...
singularity2001 2y ago
FF: event is undefined Chrome: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 ()

malux85 2y ago

This is awesome, I love using 3D engines for visualisation and I’m already writing my own GPU shaders to visualise electron density grids for example - having a high performance runtime I can hook into would be such a big help. Especially if it had a high performance (60fps+) particle system that can handle 10s millions particles

kranke155 2y ago
Press X for doubt that you can run 10s millions of particles in unreal on the browser.
- moonmagick 2y ago
  If it’s fully on GPU that should be tenable, regardless of browser or not
- malux85 2y ago
  If you use shaders and are smart about GPU data structures you can do it, I have got 5-6 million particles running smoothly (60fps) in my own testing which is just a hacky weekend mash with no optimization, here's a blog post of someone who went into detail on something similar here: https://dgerrells.com/blog/how-fast-is-javascript-simulating-20-000-000-particles https://dgerrells.com/blog/how-fast-is-javascript-simulating... From the blog post: > This version can hit 20m particles on on M1 mac at around 20fps on battery life. That is pretty crazy for pure javascript. My desktop can do about 30m at the same fps. I asked a friend who had a 32 core CPU to test it and they hit about 40m which is almost enough to fill five 4k displays. Having a full engine toolkit at my disposal with mature sytems for geometry, physics, particles, templating etc would make me much more productive than having to write the shaders myself, even if the engine has some overhead. My comment above was a wish list, I know I'm asking for a lot, but I make scientific visualization software so I like to push at the edge!
  - kranke155 2y ago
    I’m sorry, I am dumb.

programmarchy 2y ago

Wow, that's an amazing achievement. At one point, UE had an option to build for HTML5, which was later deprecated and offloaded to a community fork [1] which was abandoned. So I thought it'd never happen. Well done! [1] https://github.com/UnrealEngineHTML5 https://github.com/UnrealEngineHTML5

NathanFlurry 2y ago
A friend and I forked UE4 a while back and stripped all of the bloat to try and get it running well on a shit-tier Chromebook. We only stripped it down to 30 mb, but the end result (physics + terrain) ran way smoother than any Unity game I've played on that ToasterBook. Plot twist: people stop writing casual games in Unity and switch to Unreal to target low-end hardware. Needless to say: as someone who spent my teens and early 20s working on multiplayer web games, I'm incredibly excited for this.
- ffhhj 2y ago
  The problem is the editor, it still needs too much RAM when Unity doesn't, and that makes people drop it. Whether UE reduced the bloat indies would move instantly.
  - spywaregorilla 2y ago
    Oh please. Any gaming laptop can run the ue5 editor.
    - ffhhj 2y ago
      Yeah, I guess Epic expects indies to have plenty of resources. They can keep waiting for mass adoption of UE.
      - spywaregorilla 2y ago
        Epic probably does expect the indie devs to have laptops, yes.

zxilly 2y ago

I opened the demo on my phone with chrome canary. It just crashed my browser.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jamesu 2y ago

Great to see more projects actually battle testing WebGPU. I've been working on porting an existing engine to WebGPU and personally I think it's one of the worst GPU APIs I have had the pleasure of working with. Perhaps if we see more practical real-world use-cases with real feedback we'll see some improvement in a later update.

thatgamer44 2y ago
Agreed, most studios would want to see maturity of the API, and that initial issues are ironed out. I’d hazard a guess that WebGPU is going to usher in a new golden era of browser games, especially now that features such as compute shaders are on the table.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  I seriously doubt it, WebGL 2.0 so far failed to deliver something like Infinity Blade from 2011, the flagship game of iOS mobile gaming with OpenGL ES 3.0.