5 ms·
Responding to your pre-edited comment. > whom is WebGPU for? […] it’s a huge rigamarole. Where is this comment coming from? WebGPU enables compute shaders, an
by dahart 2y ago
Responding to your pre-edited comment.
> whom is WebGPU for? […] it’s a huge rigamarole.
Where is this comment coming from? WebGPU enables compute shaders, and there are applications in anything that uses a GPU, from ML to physics to audio to … you name it. What is making you think game engines would be the only users? I bet a lot of companies are looking forward to being able to use compute shaders in JS apps and web pages.
> Godot has had zero development for WebGPU support.
Why would Godot be an indicator? I love Godot and their efforts, but it’s less than 1% of game engine market share, and a much smaller less well funded team. Of course they’re not on the bleeding edge. Unity is closer to 30% market share and is actively engaging with WebGPU, so it seems like you’re downplaying and contradicting a strong indicator.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoI edited my comment. > WebGPU enables compute shaders, and there are applications in anything that uses a GPU, from ML to physics to audio to … you name it. I know. If you have to go through a giant product like Unity for example to use WebGPU because Apple will essentially have its own flavor of WebGPU just like it has its own flavor of everything, is it really cross platform? Does Apple support Vulkan? No. It was invented for middlewares! Apple has a flag to toggle on WebGPU on iOS today. I know dude. What does that really mean? They have such a poor record of support for gamey things on Mobile Safari. No immersive WebXR, a long history of breaking WASM, a long history of poor WebGL 2 and texture compression support. Why is this going to be any different?
- dahart 2y agoI’m still not sure what the point is. WebGPU is an API, is that that you mean by middleware? What’s the issue? Apple will do their own thing, and they might not allow WebGPU on Safari. What bearing does that have on what people using Linux, Windows, Firefox, and Chrome should do? And where exactly is this cross platform claim you’re referring to?
- doctorpangloss 2y agoThe issue is, it's likely that a company with $2 BILLION spent on product development and a very deep relationship with Apple, like Unity, will have success using WebGPU the way it is intended, and nobody else will. So then, in conclusion, WebGPU is designed for Unity, not you and me. Unity is designed for you and me. Are you getting it?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Eiim 2y agoYou haven't substantiated why nobody else could make use of WebGPU. Are Google the only ones who can understand Beacons because they make $300B/year? GPU is hard, but it doesn't take billions to figure out.
- jms55 2y ago> The issue is, it's likely that a company with $2 BILLION spent on product development and a very deep relationship with Apple, like Unity, will have success using WebGPU the way it is intended, and nobody else will. Not really. Bevy https://bevyengine.org https://bevyengine.org uses WebGPU exclusively, and we have unfortunately little funding - definitely not $2 billion. A lot of the stuff proposed in the article (bindless, 64-bit atomics, etc) is stuff we (and others) proposed :) If anything, WebGPU the spec could really use _more_ funding and developer time from experienced graphics developers.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoI agree with you, Bevy is a worthy cause. Why are people downvoting? The idea of Great High Performance Graphics Effortlessly on All Platforms is very appealing. It is fundamentally empathetic. It is an opium to game developers whose real antagonist is Apple and Nintendo, and who want a more organic journey in game development than Unity Learn. Is it a realizable goal? Time will tell. Everyone should be advocating for more focused efforts, but then. Are you going to say, Bevy is better than Godot? It’s subjective right? Open source efforts are already spread so thin. An inability to rally behind one engine means achieving 2013’s Unity 5 level of functionality is years away. Looking at it critically, in fact much effort in the open source ecosystem is even anti games. For example emulators used to pirate Nintendo Switch games have more mature multiplatform graphics engine implementations than Godot and Bevy do. It would be nice if that weren’t true, you might tell me in some sense that I am wrong, but c’mon. It’s crazy how much community effort goes into piracy compared to the stuff that would sincerely benefit game developers. WebGPU is authored by giant media companies, and will have purposefully hobbled support by the most obnoxious of them all, Apple - the one platform where it is kind of impractical to pirate stuff, but also, where it is kind of impractical to deliver games through the browser. Precisely because of the empathetic, yet ultimately false, promises of WebGPU.
- asyx 2y agoApple submitted Metal as a web spec and they turned this into WebGPU and Apple got everything they asked for to avoid apple going rogue again. The fear that Apple of all companies is going to drop WebGPU support is really not based in reality.
- flohofwoe 2y ago> because Apple will essentially have its own flavor of WebGPU Apple's WebGPU implementation in Safari is entirely spec compliant, and this time they've actually been faster than Firefox.
- rwbt 2y agoI wish Apple made a standalone Webgpu.framework spinning it off of WebKit so that apps can link to it directly instead of having to link to Dawn/wgpu.
- flohofwoe 2y agoSounds like an interesting idea at first until the point where they will probably create a Swift/ObjC API around it instead of the standard webgpu.h C API, and at that point you can just as well use Metal - which is actually a bit less awkward than the WebGPU API in some areas.
- rwbt 2y agoMaybe it makes more sense as a community project. Not sure how difficult it'd be to extract it from Webkit...