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by moth-fuzz 1209 days ago
It’s all dated. All of it. WebGL 1 is an outdated version of OpenGL (which is already an outdated API), WebGL 2 which was only just recently widely supported, brings a sort-of-less-outdated version of OpenGL (which, again, is itself outdated).

So we’re mostly waiting on WebGPU support so we can use a more modern-feeling API. But by the time WebGPU becomes both itself standardized and then widely supported, well, who knows if it will still be relevant…

The web just unfortunately lags behind while still emulating desktop. It would be fine if it did it’s own thing entirely so we wouldn’t have anything to compare to but writing 3D for web just feels like writing 3D for desktop 10 years ago. Plus performance and security… it’s way easier to just drop a .exe on itch.io or whatever.
2 comments
xdennis 1209 days ago
I'm not convinced that subpar graphics is the reason for the lack of browser games.

I'd suggest that the reason is monetization. People are used to buying phone apps and console games, but expect web pages to be free. And open source is good at software but not games.

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dakom 1209 days ago
I think that's part of it, but the other part is load times.

People are fine waiting the 10-30 minutes for a game to download on Steam or console. But they don't want to wait more than a few seconds for webpages.

Also, techies understand that there's ways of agressively caching,but I don't think average users register that it's just a first-load issue.

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pjmlp 1209 days ago
Except WebGPU is also dated, based on the version 1.0 of Vulkan/Metal/DX 12.

Don't expect mesh shaders, RT or something like nanite in the next 10 years after WebGPU 1.0 gets released later this year.

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moth-fuzz 1209 days ago
Exactly. I just didn’t want to sound too pessimistic in the original post… honestly I’m just excited we get bare minimum a modern architecture on the web. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still rather just write for desktop in the end anyway if I want to use techniques from this generation.
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pjmlp 1209 days ago
Which is what one needs for debugging as well, after all these years the only debugging tool for Web is spectorjs.
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