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Shipping WebGPU on Windows in Firefox 141
- politelemon 1y agoThanks, looking forward to the Linux implementation as well. Are there any webgpu demos worth trying when this is released?
- franga2000 1y agoI found this quite impressive: https://huggingface.co/spaces/webml-community/kokoro-webgpu https://huggingface.co/spaces/webml-community/kokoro-webgpu It also works without WebGPU, just very slowly.
- elpocko 1y agohttps://threejs.org/examples/?q=webgpu https://threejs.org/examples/?q=webgpu (with fallback to WebGL if WebGPU is not available)
- s-macke 1y agoMost of the sites I’ve seen are indeed just demos. I especially like Compute Toys [0], a Shadertoy clone for WebGPU. [1] is probably the best place to find demos. I have a site myself in which I experiment mainly with WebGPU Compute Shaders [2]. [0] https://compute.toys/ https://compute.toys/ [1] https://github.com/mikbry/awesome-webgpu https://github.com/mikbry/awesome-webgpu [2] https://github.com/s-macke/WebGPU-Lab https://github.com/s-macke/WebGPU-Lab
- vesterde 1y agoI have this toy I’ve enjoyed building immensely, for composing video effects. https://vester.si/motion/ https://vester.si/motion/
- ath92 1y agoI’d say this is one of the most impressive demos: https://github.com/ArthurBrussee/brush https://github.com/ArthurBrussee/brush Gaussian splatting training and rendering using webgpu
- snickerdoodle12 1y agoThe web demo is just a gray page, not very impressive. Maybe once they support linux.
- diggan 1y agoAddition to other comments, (most of) Bevy's examples are both available in WebGL and WebGPU so useful for comparison. https://bevy.org/examples-webgpu/ https://bevy.org/examples-webgpu/ + https://bevy.org/examples https://bevy.org/examples (WebGL)
- erichdongubler 1y agoWe've got this index of apps we're aware of, if you'd like to peruse: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=webgpu-apps https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=webgpu-apps
- mkw5053 1y agoSome Unity demos: 1. https://boat-demo.cds.unity3d.com/ https://boat-demo.cds.unity3d.com/ 2. https://www.keijiro.tokyo/WebGPU-Test/ https://www.keijiro.tokyo/WebGPU-Test/ 3. https://www.chatlord.com/4/ https://www.chatlord.com/4/
- doctorpangloss 1y agoThe Keijiro examples work flawlessly on iOS with WebGPU feature flag enabled. Big caveat, but it shows why this stuff matters: Linux desktop, a little, iOS mobile Safari, a lot.
- darkwater 1y agoVery cool! Now, let see how much will take for G-products to actually use it and not complaining about "browser not supported for this feature, use Chrome".
- sroussey 1y agoWhich google products use it?
- mort96 1y agoThe one I can think of is Google Meet, where some GPU-thing is used to add background effects such as blur. However I'm not sure this actually uses WebGPU; it used to use on Firefox until Google added a browser check, and AFAIK, if you could fool Meet to think Firefox was Chrome, it would still work. This might still be a semi-legitimate thing, i.e maybe they kept around a WebGL implementation for a while as a fallback but moved the main implementation to WebGPU and don't want to maintain the fallback. It certainly fits well into their strategy of making sure that the web really only works properly with Chrome.
- firtoz 1y agoI'm on Brave Linux which requires special flag for WebGPU (not turned on for me) and can confirm that background blur still works with Meet without WebGPU
- dragonelite 1y agoIt sounds like something webgl2 should be able to handle easily.
- surajrmal 1y agoOfficial documentation suggests meet works with Firefox: https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473?hl=en#zippy=%2Cuse-a-supported-web-browser https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473?hl=en#zippy=%...
- pixelpoet 1y agoNice one, been waiting for this! Thanks to the devs.
- pjmlp 1y agoFinally! Kudos for everyone involved into this. I was feeling a bit dirty playing around with WebGPU with only Chrome into the game thus far, even Safari has enabled their preview quite recently.
- tux3 1y agoGreat news, congrats to the gfx team!
- nmstoker 1y agoGreat news. Now hope they can sort it for Firefox on Android.
- JasperBekkers 1y agoVery happy to see this as it means that our gpu-allocator [0] crate (used currently by wgpu's dx12 backend, but capable of supporting vulkan & metal as well) will see a significant wider audience then what we've been using it for so far (which is shipping our gpu benchmark suite: evolve [1] [0]: https://github.com/Traverse-Research/gpu-allocator/ https://github.com/Traverse-Research/gpu-allocator/ [1]: https://www.evolvebenchmark.com/ https://www.evolvebenchmark.com/
- erichdongubler 1y agoA well-earned accolade! Thanks for helping Firefox make a WebGPU.
- coffeeaddict1 1y agoI'm still hoping that WebGPU somehow takes off for non-web use so that we have an easy to use cross platform API with an official spec (a replacement for opengl). However, it seems that outside of the Rust world, there doesn't seem to be much interest for using WebGPU for native code. I don't know any big projects using Dawn for example. Part of the reason seems to be that WebGPU came a bit too late and everyone was already using custom-built abstractions over dx, vulkan and metal.
- crthpl 1y agoAnother reason may be that WebGPU didn't allow for as much optimization and control as Vulkan, and the performance isn't as good as Vulkan. WebGPU also doesn't have all the extensions that Vulkan has.
- pjmlp 1y agoIt is called middleware, no need to wait for WebGPU outside of the browser, with all the constraints of an API design targeted to browser sandboxes.
- coffeeaddict1 1y agoNone of those middlewares have a spec and none of them offer the compatibility guarantees that WebGPU provides.
- pjmlp 1y agoAs anyone used to Khronos APIs is aware, that is of little value without actual Conformance Tests Suites, and even then there are plently of forgotten guarantees when using consumer hardware with all the usual OEM quality practices.
- grovesNL 1y agowgpu can run the WebGPU Conformance Test Suite for validation against the WebGPU specification. Was there something else you'd like to see?
- Zealotux 1y agoGreat news, congrats to the team!
- joelthelion 1y agoWhat are the use cases for this? Are we sure sites are not just going to use it to mine bitcoins using their users' hardware?
- popcar2 1y agoIt'll open the door for more ambitious webgames and web apps that use the GPU.
- pjmlp 1y agoI keep waiting to see ambitious webgames that could match the experience of Infinity Blade from 2010, used to demo iOS new OpenGL ES 3.0 capabilities, the foundation of WebGL 2.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Blade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Blade Game demo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2CXudqc6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2CXudqc6c The only thing I like in Web 3D APIs, is that outside middleware engines, they are the only mainstream 3D APIs designed with managed languages in mind, instead of after the fact bindings. Still waiting for something like RenderDoc on the respective browser developer tools, we never got anything better than SpectorJS. It isn't even printf debugging, rather pixel colour debugging.
- josephg 1y agoThey’re also the only 3D APIs designed to safely untrusted code to use your GPU.
- pjmlp 1y agoAssuming proper drivers, which browser black lists prove otherwise. Hence one of the reasons why it never took off as Flash replacement, and indies rather focused on native mobile games. It is hard to sell an experience, when there is zero control over the hardware acceleration.
- andybak 1y agoSame use cases that native apps have for using a GPU except in a browser? > Are we sure sites are not just going to use it to mine bitcoins using their users' hardware? Some almost certainly will but like all similar issues the game of cat and mouse will continue.
- vFunct 1y agoPretty sure Apple is going to release WebGPU support in Safari in Mac OS X 26 Tahoe as well. There was a WebGPU video in one of the WWDC sessions.
- bobajeff 1y ago>we plan to ship WebGPU on Mac and Linux in the coming months, and finally on Android Sounds good. I'm not really thrilled about it as of now. What ever the reason, it's not been supported in Linux for any browsers as of yet. My guess is it's too hard to expose without creating terrible attack surfaces. This seems to support my view that web standards are too overgrown for how users actually use the web. It's obviously too late to do anything about it now but all the issues of monoculture and funding we are worried about today stem from the complexity of making a web browser due to decisions tracing all the way back to the days of Netscape.
- pjmlp 1y agoDepends on which Linux, it is supported on Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux and ChromeOS/Linux. However it kind of proves the point on how relevant browser vendors see GNU/Linux for this kind of workloads.
- grovesNL 1y agoReally excited to see WebGPU/wgpu ship in Firefox! Congratulations and thanks to Mozilla for supporting this.
- erichdongubler 1y agoThanks! Can't forget your help in the process.
- SaintSeiya 1y agoAs I see it, the current state of graphics API is worse now than the OpenGL era, despite its promises none of the modern API's are easier to use, truly portable and cross platform. Having to reinvent OpenGL by creating custom wrappers around Vulkan, Metal, DirectX12, etc is such a time waster as dropping strings and going back to raw char arrays in the name of performance on every modern language.
- naikrovek 1y agoYeah, it’s kind of insane how things have gotten. There are no adults, no leaders with an eye on things leading us away from further mistakes, and we keep going deeper.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoWhat would a leader do? Nvidia wants to sell hardware, Nintendo wants to sell games, Microsoft wants to either buy Linux or crush it. Nobody has a stake in things actually working
- dagmx 1y agoThe point of the graphics APIs is to be as close to the metal as possible. It’s a balancing act between portability and hardware design/performance. I really don’t think it’s as trivial as non-graphics engineers make it out to be to make something universal. But even when it existed in the form of OpenGL , or now WebGPU, people complain about the performance overhead. So you end up back here.
- m-schuetz 1y agoVulkan isnt close to the metal, though. It's a high-level wrapper around all the quirks and differences of ancient mobile to modern desktop GPUs. Render passes, for example, are entirely irrelevant for desktop GPUs. They are not close to metal, but add needless complexity. Recently, a Vulkan driver engineer even told me that they are not necessary for tile-based mobile GPUs for which they were intended, since they can figure the necessary things out by themselves. And I would guess they need to, since they became optional in Vulkan, so they cant relly on them anymore. They are still mandatory in WebGPU, for no good reason. And there are so many pointless things that are no longer relevant, or should at best be optional so that devs can get things done before optimizing.
- simonw 1y agoI hadn't realized WebGPU was already available on macOS in the Firefox Nightlies! I just installed the Mac nightly from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/ and now this demo works: https://huggingface.co/spaces/reach-vb/github-issue-generator-webgpu https://huggingface.co/spaces/reach-vb/github-issue-generato... It runs the SmolLM2 model compiled to WebAssembly for structured data extraction. I previously thought that demo only worked in Chrome. (If I try it in regular Firefox for Mac I get "Error: WebGPU is not supported in your current environment, but it is necessary to run the WebLLM engine.")
- erichdongubler 1y agoMember of Firefox's WebGPU team here. This is expected. Stable support for macOS is something we hope to ship soon! From the post: > Although Firefox 141 enables WebGPU only on Windows, we plan to ship WebGPU on Mac and Linux in the coming months, and finally on Android.
- modeless 1y agoSeems like Firefox will ship WebGPU on Linux before Chrome does, then.
- danjl 1y agoThey can take a huge step into the present by supporting RTX ray tracing native instructions on the GPU.
- Vipitis 1y agothat's an exciting feature to have available, as raytracing hardware is now in mobile iGPUs and phones. There is a tracking issue[1], although I am not sure how much of that makes it to the browser. [1] https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues/6762 https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues/6762
- astlouis44 1y agoThis is very exciting, congrats to the Firefox team! My company is working to bring Unreal to the browser, and we've built out a custom WebGPU RHI for Unreal Engine 5. Here are demos of the tech in action, for anyone interested: (Will only work on Chromium-based browsers on desktop, and on some Android phones) Cropout: https://play-dev.simplystream.com/?token=aa91857c-ab14-4c24-963a-36203784474b https://play-dev.simplystream.com/?token=aa91857c-ab14-4c24-... Car configurator: https://garage.cjponyparts.com/ https://garage.cjponyparts.com/
- aspenmayer 1y ago> (Will only work on Chromium-based browsers on desktop, and on some Android phones) This post is about WebGPU in Firefox. Do you plan to test and/or release a Firefox-compatible version?
- socalgal2 1y agoIs it possible that this is just that Firefox hasn't shipped yet and it's already spec compatible and just requires Firefox to match the spec?
- saubeidl 1y agoWill it work in Firefox 141 on Windows? If not, why?
- Eduard 1y agoAndroid Chrome on Pixel 7a: "cropout" just shows 0 % loading bar2, "car configurator" has loading bar go up to 97 or 98 %, but then also doesn't continue.
- LtdJorge 1y agoSame on Firefox on Linux (Gentoo), same percentages.
- astlouis44 1y ago
- mclau157 1y agoAre there enough devs working on uses for this? I was hoping for a resurgence like flash devs 20 years ago
- fidotron 1y agoIf you follow things like three.js you'll be painfully aware that in truth there doesn't seem to be much use for this at all. "3D on the web" is something that sounds fun until it's possible at which point it becomes meh[1]. The exception proving the rule would be that Marble Madness promo game https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212644 Consequently much of the JS 3D community has become obsessed with gaussian splatting, and AR more generally. [1] And I would extend this to what's going on here: people prefer complaining about how missing features in APIs prevent their genius idea from being possible, when in truth there's simply no demand from users for this stuff at all. You could absolutely have done web Minecraft years ago, and it's very revealing such a thing is not wildly popular. I personally wasted too long on WebGL ( https://www.luduxia.com/ https://www.luduxia.com/ ), and what I learned is the moment it all works people just assume it was nothing and move on.
- pjmlp 1y agoThere are so many blockers, versus old style Flash games. Driver and OS blacklisting, means that game developers aren't aware of the user experience, nor can they controll it, as in native games, or server side rendering with streaming. No proper debugging tools other than printf/pixel debugging. The amount of loading screens that would be needed, given memory constraints of browser sessions. This alone means there is hardly that much ROI for 3D webgames, and most uses end up being in ecommerce, or Google Maps kind of applications.
- notnullorvoid 1y ago> You could absolutely have done web Minecraft years ago, and it's very revealing such a thing is not wildly popular. Minecraft started as a java applet in the browser, that's part of the reason it was able to gain such a rapid following.
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- Vipitis 1y agoI have been using wgpu for my main projects for nearly two years now. Let's hope this rollout means more maintainers so issues I have opened 18 months ago bug more people and eventually get resolved. Never touched rust myself but maybe I find the motivation and time to do it myself. As I also depend on the wgpu-native bindings it's slow for updates to reach. Like we just got to v25 last week and v26 dropped a couple days prior to that.
- shmerl 1y agoWill WebReder switch to WGPU / Vulkan as well?
- 4htmlgames 1y ago[dead]