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This 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 E

This 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 ago
  Is 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 ago
Will it work in Firefox 141 on Windows? If not, why?
Eduard 1y ago
Android 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 ago
  Same on Firefox on Linux (Gentoo), same percentages.
  - astlouis44 1y ago
    Linux doesn't have WebGPU support yet, that would be the reason.
    - LtdJorge 1y ago
      That's true, but it should detect it and display a message that says there is no WebGPU support. The loading bar makes it seem like it will eventually load.
wslh 1y ago
In Google Chrome for macOS: 0%, and not moving, on the first link, and stops in 98% (sometimes in 97%) in the second one. Same with Safari.
- astlouis44 1y ago
  Sorry to hear that! I will say that usually if you wait long enough, it will eventually load. Try popping open your dev console sidebar, you should see assets downloading over the network. If it does crash, you'll be able to see why. I'd be interested in seeing any bug reports if you do fine some, we're always squashing bugs over here!
- astlouis44 1y ago
  Can you try this one instead? No loading bar, but it should actually load and relatively fast. https://topdown.tiwsamples.com/ https://topdown.tiwsamples.com/
  - wslh 1y ago
    Impressive, that works!
    - astlouis44 1y ago
      Thanks! Believe it or not, that demo is actually WebGL 2.0
  - pygy_ 1y ago
    It works in Chromium on MacOS, but I'm not a fan of the FF VI music rip off (Terra's theme: https://youtu.be/GxLbTAA6gK0?t=11 https://youtu.be/GxLbTAA6gK0?t=11).
- socalgal2 1y ago
  IMO This is why Unreal (and Unity) for web is just not a good fit. Most games made in those engines use 100s of megs of assets. You download the 100-500meg file, to your hard drive, then run the game. That's not the web. To be good on the web requires designing your game to start immediately with the minimal amount of downloaded. Maybe stream some stuff in the background but be playable immediately. AFAICT neither Unreal nor Unity do that by default. You can maybe coerce them to do it but most devs don't. As such they get these bad experiences when they try to put their creation on the web
Jap2-0 1y ago
On Firefox 142 (nightly): Cropout: After being stuck at 0% for a long while and 1200 network requests, it loads to a menu with a black background and will start a game but only UI elements show up. Seems to have a lot of errors parsing shaders, as well as a few other miscellaneous errors. Car configurator: Several errors while at 0% (never loads), the first among them being `[223402304]: MessageBox type 0 Caption Message Text Game files required to initialize the global shader and cooked content are most likely missing. Refer to Engine log for details.` I would concur with others that you should at least test this in Firefox before advertising it here.
VMtest 1y ago
> My company is working to bring Unreal to the browser you work in Epic Games?
- astlouis44 1y ago
  No we are not affiliated, we are a startup working on this ourselves.
pjmlp 1y ago
I keep seeing these posts and they never work on hardware that I actually own. Are we supposed to try them out on the same kind of high end gamer desktop setup requirements for the native version?
- astlouis44 1y ago
  What kind of hardware do you own?

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 ago
Is 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 ago

Will it work in Firefox 141 on Windows? If not, why?

Eduard 1y ago

Android 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 ago
Same on Firefox on Linux (Gentoo), same percentages.
- astlouis44 1y ago
  Linux doesn't have WebGPU support yet, that would be the reason.
  - LtdJorge 1y ago
    That's true, but it should detect it and display a message that says there is no WebGPU support. The loading bar makes it seem like it will eventually load.

wslh 1y ago

In Google Chrome for macOS: 0%, and not moving, on the first link, and stops in 98% (sometimes in 97%) in the second one. Same with Safari.

astlouis44 1y ago
Sorry to hear that! I will say that usually if you wait long enough, it will eventually load. Try popping open your dev console sidebar, you should see assets downloading over the network. If it does crash, you'll be able to see why. I'd be interested in seeing any bug reports if you do fine some, we're always squashing bugs over here!
astlouis44 1y ago
Can you try this one instead? No loading bar, but it should actually load and relatively fast. https://topdown.tiwsamples.com/ https://topdown.tiwsamples.com/
- wslh 1y ago
  Impressive, that works!
  - astlouis44 1y ago
    Thanks! Believe it or not, that demo is actually WebGL 2.0
- pygy_ 1y ago
  It works in Chromium on MacOS, but I'm not a fan of the FF VI music rip off (Terra's theme: https://youtu.be/GxLbTAA6gK0?t=11 https://youtu.be/GxLbTAA6gK0?t=11).
socalgal2 1y ago
IMO This is why Unreal (and Unity) for web is just not a good fit. Most games made in those engines use 100s of megs of assets. You download the 100-500meg file, to your hard drive, then run the game. That's not the web. To be good on the web requires designing your game to start immediately with the minimal amount of downloaded. Maybe stream some stuff in the background but be playable immediately. AFAICT neither Unreal nor Unity do that by default. You can maybe coerce them to do it but most devs don't. As such they get these bad experiences when they try to put their creation on the web

Jap2-0 1y ago

On Firefox 142 (nightly): Cropout: After being stuck at 0% for a long while and 1200 network requests, it loads to a menu with a black background and will start a game but only UI elements show up. Seems to have a lot of errors parsing shaders, as well as a few other miscellaneous errors. Car configurator: Several errors while at 0% (never loads), the first among them being `[223402304]: MessageBox type 0 Caption Message Text Game files required to initialize the global shader and cooked content are most likely missing. Refer to Engine log for details.` I would concur with others that you should at least test this in Firefox before advertising it here.

VMtest 1y ago

> My company is working to bring Unreal to the browser you work in Epic Games?

astlouis44 1y ago
No we are not affiliated, we are a startup working on this ourselves.

pjmlp 1y ago

I keep seeing these posts and they never work on hardware that I actually own. Are we supposed to try them out on the same kind of high end gamer desktop setup requirements for the native version?

astlouis44 1y ago
What kind of hardware do you own?