What I hate on the 3D Web APIs, is how out of date they happen to be.
WebGL 2.0 is locked into OpenGL ES 3.0, when they rebooted work to finally catch up with OpenGL ES 3.1 set of APIs, and already existing protoytpe from Intel[0] for compute, Google dropped their support for WebGPU because anyone that cares should migrate to WebGPU instead [1]. Two years later still no WebGPU.
So WebGL 2.0 is stuck in what we could consider iPhone 5S 3D capabilities, with no known game that is capable of matching Infinity Blade 3 [2].
In similar vein when WebGPU finally comes out this year (they were targeting 2022), we will have an API designed as MVP 1.0, with the capabilities from Metal/DirectX 12/Vulkan when they were at version 1.0 in 2015, while asking everyone to rewrite their GLSL shaders into WGSL.
No wonder that with fast Internet connections, game studios are more interested into adopting pixel streaming technologies using latest 3D APIs than investing into pure Web technologies.
Usually the community talks are all about 3D models for ecommerce shops, tile rendering for online maps and the return of Flash like tooling.
Something like Nanite or mesh shaders on WebGPU? It will never happen.
If mobile support is important, the Vulkan 1.0 feature set is basically all you can hope for unfortunately, with or without WebGPU inbetween.
For WebGPU it was the right decision to select the base feature set for the biggest possible reach. Desktop-GPU extensions can still be added on top when the need arises.
Just like it happened with WebGL, I bet WebGPU will stay at 1.0, and maybe around 2032 we might eventually get WebGPU 2.0 with the native capabilites available 2023.
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What I hate on the 3D Web APIs, is how out of date they happen to be.
WebGL 2.0 is locked into OpenGL ES 3.0, when they rebooted work to finally catch up with OpenGL ES 3.1 set of APIs, and already existing protoytpe from Intel[0] for compute, Google dropped their support for WebGPU because anyone that cares should migrate to WebGPU instead [1]. Two years later still no WebGPU.
So WebGL 2.0 is stuck in what we could consider iPhone 5S 3D capabilities, with no known game that is capable of matching Infinity Blade 3 [2].
In similar vein when WebGPU finally comes out this year (they were targeting 2022), we will have an API designed as MVP 1.0, with the capabilities from Metal/DirectX 12/Vulkan when they were at version 1.0 in 2015, while asking everyone to rewrite their GLSL shaders into WGSL.
No wonder that with fast Internet connections, game studios are more interested into adopting pixel streaming technologies using latest 3D APIs than investing into pure Web technologies.
Usually the community talks are all about 3D models for ecommerce shops, tile rendering for online maps and the return of Flash like tooling.
Something like Nanite or mesh shaders on WebGPU? It will never happen.
[0] - https://registry.khronos.org/webgl/specs/latest/2.0-compute/ [1] - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113199... [2] - https://www.polygon.com/2013/9/10/4715534/infinity-blade-3-c...
If mobile support is important, the Vulkan 1.0 feature set is basically all you can hope for unfortunately, with or without WebGPU inbetween.
For WebGPU it was the right decision to select the base feature set for the biggest possible reach. Desktop-GPU extensions can still be added on top when the need arises.
Android Baseline profile is Vulkan 1.1.
Just like it happened with WebGL, I bet WebGPU will stay at 1.0, and maybe around 2032 we might eventually get WebGPU 2.0 with the native capabilites available 2023.
How many Android versions does this go back though? (I can only find the baseline profiles for 2021 and 2022).
The ones that matter when Vulkan became a required API on Android, Android 10 onwards.
https://source.android.com/docs/core/graphics/implement-vulk...