[erichdongubler]

Hey, member of the Firefox WebGPU team here. The short summary is: it's not yet ready for general consumption, but we're hoping to do so on the order of months, not years! Many things already work, and we'd encourage you to try it out on Nightly.

There is a _lot_ of work to do still to make sure we comply with the spec. in a way that's acceptable to ship in a browser. We're 90% of the way there in terms of functionality, but the last 10% of fixing up spec. changes in the last few years + being significantly more resourced-constrained (we have 3 full-time folks, Chrome has/had an order of magnitude more humans working on WebGPU) means we've got our work cut out for us.

If you're interested if your use cases work already a consumer of WebGPU in JS on Firefox, you can:

- Follow the `Platform Graphics: WebGPU` component in Bugzilla ([0]).

- CC yourself on the `webgpu-v1`[0] bug and its dependent meta bugs (which aggregate yet more work). These get updated every so often to recognize the (ahem) ever-growing list of things we have to do in Firefox.

- Try things out in Nightly, and file issues to help us prioritize things!

[0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Graphics%...

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=webgpu-v1

[raphlinus]

Cheering on the progress. As a long time user of wgpu in Vello, I'm impressed with the progress there. The advanced compute stuff has been working quite well, and it's also got some nice extensions like subgroups (so far only usable in native configurations, but I'm hopeful the extension will be standardized so it's available in browser as well).

[koolala]

Thanks for posting here! Very encouraging!

Can't wait to see WebGL / WebGL2 / WebGPU performance benchmark tables comparing all the browser and platforms when it ships everywhere.

[Joel_Mckay]

Add proper game-pad and joystick calibration support.

The whole sandbox HID scope capture issue is a core problem that needs resolved.

Best of luck =3

[lukan]

I don't think that is related to WebGPU ..

[Joel_Mckay]

If people want it to be relevant to its primary use case, than low-latency HID interface callbacks are certainly required... Otherwise you will have people fighting the mouse-in-browser scope issues, and partying like its 1993 on the keyboard.

If people don't keep the IMU/navigation interfaces close to graphics interface layer, than the project will develop difficult to debug syncing and or lag issues in the VM layer.

I could be wrong about this issue, but it was the primary reason we culled the js based game engine project. =3

[lukan]

I did not say your wishes are unreasonable. Just that here is not the place for them. The person you replied to works on WebGPU and is quite buisy with that ..

[Joel_Mckay]

It is not personal feature requests, but rather a historical comparison with why VRML/X3D failed to gain popularity.

Ignoring users and project architects is hardly a new problem by any stretch of the imagination. Leave the noted key features out, and the GPU API will remain vestigial. =3

[erichdongubler]

You're informing people (i.e., me and my team) that are working on implementing a spec. from a single piece of the web platform that their piece of the platform (graphics programming) is useless for a specific use case (gaming) without a very different piece of functionality being implemented on the web platform. That's valid feedback, but also difficult to act on with it's current form and audience.

I think what lukan is trying to tell you is that if you're serious about your advice being taken, you will need to find a venue in which the right people in the web ecosystem can engage with it. Neither me nor my team are the right audience for that, unfortunately. I suggest you file an issue on Bugzilla, if you want to start there! I'm happy to assist in making that happen, if you want.

If you do actually follow up with the above, I think you need to answer first: What APIs already exist on the web platform, and why are they not sufficient? For example, the Gamepad API exists; were you aware of it before, and do you think it fulfills the stated use case? Why or why not?

I will also push back on these statements:

> If people want it to be relevant to its primary use case, than low-latency HID interface callbacks are certainly required...

> Leave the noted key features out, and the GPU API will remain vestigial. =3

...because it appears to ignore valid use cases that exist outside of gaming. My team doesn't just serve the gaming use case (though we sure hope it will), and calling the API we're working on "vestigial [without supporting gaming]" is disrespectful to both people who need those other use cases filled _and_ people like me who are trying to make them possible. It also implies a responsibility for the platform as a whole that we can't possibly shoulder ourselves; the amount of expertise required to make a platform across all major OSes for just _one_ of these web platform APIs can be huge, and WebGPU is, indeed, very large.

[pjmlp]

It is related to 3D Web being meaningful for anything besides shadertoy like demos, data visualization and ecommerce 360° visualizations.

[shmerl]

Good to know, thanks!