Is WebGL the future?

http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1255

by irrlichthn • 15 years ago

21 37 15 years ago

hastur7• 15 years ago

Definitely not. The performance is pathetic, the feature set is pretty basic.

WebGL is where compiled 3d apps/games were, like, 20 years ago. Yes, I know it will improve, but so will compiled products. The sheer fact that WebGL is interpreted and is a poor-man's subset of OpenGL, puts it at permanent disadvantage.

Of course, you could have some trick allowing for compiled graphics code to be run within the browser, analogous to the Chrome Native Client, and with all the DirectX/OpenGL features. But that's no longer WebGL, that's just a smart trick to run old-school code within the confines of a browser environment. You might just as well write a stand-alone app.

irrlichthn• 15 years ago

20 years ago? That was the time of Wolfenstein 3D. :) Much more thant that is possible with WebGL... Take a look at some of those demos available. (example: http://www.ambiera.com/copperlicht/demos.html) You can always workaround that performance problem. No need to program some CPU cylcle swallowing AI for now.

hastur7• 15 years ago

Well, maybe 20 years was too far of a shot. But I assume you're associated with the Irrlicht game engine, so I assume that when you write "is WebGL the future?", you don't mean "will it be useful at all?" or "will some silly casual games be possible in WebGL?", but whether it will be a legitimate gaming platform, capable of competing with desktop gaming (which is where Irrlicht competence lays, afaik).

And to that I say firmly: no.

I like the demos you've linked to (and I've seen them before), no doubt they're quite impressive, considering the constraints of the browser environment.

But when I put them in context of what one could run on a computer natively, these demos remind me of Quake I. Sorry.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I think Native Client is pretty impressive if you want to make a browser-game. Bastion looks pretty good:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oohphhdkahjlioohba...

kevingadd• 15 years ago

WebGL is interpreted? What do you mean? Modern JavaScript runtimes are DEFINITELY not interpreted, and the idea of an interpreted graphics API or GPU is nonsense.

hastur7• 15 years ago

LOL, what is JavaScript then, if not interpreted?

I'm not going to get into a semantic argument, perhaps to you Java is not interpreted either, but to me anything that doesn't compile to a binary directly executable on the CPU is substandard in terms of performance. And I'm sorry to surprise you, but in 3d graphics we're still starved for processor cycles, otherwise we'd have ray-traced, globally illuminated games with huge environments to play with.

gacek• 15 years ago

WebGL is not a poor-man's subset of OpenGL, its the same subset that is supported by most mobile devices (OpenGL ES2.0). What are you missing? Quads? 3D textures? NURBS?

And yes, we know that JS is interpreted and that it's no use for building anything more than a clock on your webpage, right?

hastur7• 15 years ago

Could you write (graphically) Battlefield 3 in WebGL, assuming you'd be able to compile it to run efficiently?

As for your second question, JS is very useful, I love JS, I write 90% of my code in JS. But we're talking sophisticated 3d apps here, not whether it's useful at all.

exDM692• 15 years ago

>> WebGL is not a poor-man's subset of OpenGL, its the same subset that is supported by most mobile devices (OpenGL ES2.0).

WebGL is just that, a poor-man's subset of OpenGL. As is OpenGL ES 2, which is a standard that's deprecating very fast as mobile GPU's pack more and more kick-ass.

OpenGL ES standardization efforts are badly left behind the development, as graphics vendors are adding more and more extensions to GLES in their implementations. These extensions tend to be a little stripped down versions of desktop GL features and the worst thing is that they're not quite compatible with desktop GL or even similar extensions form other vendors. Next version of GLES (codename "Halti") has to be standardized pretty fast or it will be out of date by the time it comes out.

If you want to write high quality 3d games or graphics using GLES2, you will have to use vendor specific extensions and write code specifically for the devices you intend to ship on. If you're doing something very basic, you may get away with using only the features in GLES2, but you'll still have to consider how to match the performance to the wide array of GLES2 conformant devices out there. It also helps if you're a part of a major graphics vendor's developer partnership program, like it or not.

WebGL's standardization cycle probably even slower. It took a while for the spec to reach maturity and major browsers implementing it. AFAIK, there's no extension mechanism to gain access to not-yet-standardized features. When the next version of OpenGL ES comes out, how long will it take for it's new features to come available to WebGL? Is the WebGL API even designed for extendability? Who are the industry players willing to contribute their engineering efforts to building WebGL specs and implementations?

exDM692• 15 years ago

>> WebGL is where compiled 3d apps/games were, like, 20 years ago.

20 years is a bit of exaggeration. Doom 1 was released 20 years ago.

Feature-wise WebGL/GLES2 matches a desktop GPU circa 2004 or so. Doom 3-ish feature set. Performance wise it's a bit behind, but this varies so much from device to device that it makes no sense to take this into a discussion when we're talking about API standards and their features.

danbmil992• 15 years ago

I agree with OP. The fact that a native app is 10X or more "better" is simply dwarfed by the low friction of full immersive 3D casual games right in the browser.

The question is not "how many polygons can you render?" but rather, "how many polygons do you need to render to provide the desired experience?"

So it's a threshold question, not a contest where the winner is determined by benchmarks.

tjoff6• 15 years ago

Why should there be less friction to go to a web page rather than install a game?

I think a more honest comparison (in theory) would be to compare a site used to serve music with spotify. For those that use spotify a link that opens up spotify is probably vastly superior to anything a site can do, that's not to say that the site itself doesn't have any value. But the act of playing music is something spotify better at - and that mainly is just because (if you use spotify) you have your music collection in one place. That's where you go to play music.

Playing a game locally doesn't have to be more than pressing an hyperlink. Steam is probably the, currently, best place for this but, I know, relying on something such as spotify, steam or flash sucks. But there is nothing to say that we can't have an open android/iOS-market-like place for doing this. Apple and Microsoft will push their own markets and I'm surprised that the notion of a third party market hasn't come any longer than steam. I guess people are just too greedy.

There really shouldn't be any reason for why running it in the browser should be any better than running it locally. Have sandboxing as an option (or requirement), similar to what apple does, and go nuts.

I miss the days when running low-level code in an all-purpose browser was something that was considered moronic.

iamjustlooking• 15 years ago

I think installing a game feels like a commitment. If all I need to do is open up the browser and the game will start playing I can just check it out without making that commitment, it will get me to try it if I'm undecided, if I don't like it I can just close the window and be done with it.

You mention Spotify, I think Pandora is a great example of overcoming that feeling of commitment. If I go to the Pandora website I can listen to music right away by just typing in an artist. If I go to spotify I need to download some client and who knows how hard it will be to get rid of. If I complete the downloading step then I need to sign up for the service (I know they changed it to facebook login recently so I don't know if it's the same) just to start listening. I don't even know if I will like the service at this point because I haven't even got to try it yet. I think I would describe this as friction.

ehsanu12• 15 years ago

Why should there be less friction to go to a web page rather than install a game?

Perhaps there shouldn't be as much friction to install a game as going to a web page, but you can't deny that installing a game is currently not nearly as streamlined and easy as clicking a link. Even though it could be, or even should be. The main issue is that you have to wait to install the full game. A WebGL game would instead just download the minimum required to play the first level, and get you started playing the game ASAP.

The other thing though about a game being tied to a link is that it becomes a part of the web. Others will link directly to the actual game, rather than a page that lets you download/install the game natively. This ease of sharing is what makes it really powerful to have an in-browser game. The web is simply the ultimate form of distribution. It also seems less invasive compared to installing - you are not making any changes to your computer. Just close the web page, and it's gone (ignoring cookies/cached files). Whereas a native game will create all sorts of shortcuts and basically embed itself into your system. This is more of a perception problem with "installing" in the eyes of the average consumer.

alephnil• 15 years ago

> But the act of playing music is something spotify better at - and that mainly is just because (if you use spotify) you have your music collection in one place. That's where you go to play music.

Spotify is worth installing because it gives me all music in one place. If I had to install one app per title, I would not consider it at all. That is how games are. You have to install each title individually. That makes Spotify much more similar to the browser than it is to installed games.

Geee• 15 years ago

Future of what? I don't know any use case where I would want 3D graphics on my web pages.

Running games in a browser? That's a stupid idea to begin with. Browser should be just a document reader, and games are not documents.

Why are we reinventing wheel again? Games used to be crappy, and now we want crappy games again? Why is it so amazing if something runs in a browser? Why don't we think about other solutions like making native apps more web-like?

gcp• 15 years ago

Why is it so amazing if something runs in a browser? Why don't we think about other solutions like making native apps more web-like?

What's amazing is that something that runs in the browser will run on every platform where there is a browser (with some proper care of the inevitable small standard deviations). No such luck with native apps.

tjoff6• 15 years ago

Yeah, with native apps you have to run a script that compiles it for all platforms.

dtf• 15 years ago

Plenty of games run in the browser already, without 3D. There are also plenty of use cases for in-browser 3D that aren't game-related. See Google MapsGL or the Google Body Browser. It has huge potential for education in the sciences - I've seen a number of interesting medical teaching tools appearing.

One of the benefits of WebGL vs native application, is the ability to combine it with the entire set of document-based browser features that you're already familiar with. In fact, this is so useful that some native games these days are doing the opposite - embedding a browser kit into the game for the sake of the UI.

Tichy• 15 years ago

Nice try, but to become famous with statements like that you should be head of some large company like IBM or Microsoft.

FooBarWidget• 15 years ago

Distribution via the web is much easier. Telling people to install a .exe usually scares them, but pretty much everybody can go to a web page. And you don't have to worry about updates.

Is WebGL the future?

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