First 3D Commercial Web Game Powered By asm.js(blog.mozilla.org)
blog.mozilla.org
First 3D Commercial Web Game Powered By asm.js
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/12/12/first-3d-commercial-web-game-powered-by-asm-js-unveiled/
17 comments
It works just fine in Safari. You know, without any special treatment from Apple for asm.js optimizations.
I was sceptical but this shows that asm.js is a much better approach than Google's ActiveX wanna be solutions.
I was sceptical but this shows that asm.js is a much better approach than Google's ActiveX wanna be solutions.
In what way is using LLVM bitcode (PNaCL) at all similar to ActiveX?
Yeah yeah I get it. I like asm.js as much as the next person; I just wish this whole PNaCl-is-ActiveX meme would seriously go away. It's willful ignorance.
FWIW, I think it's fantastic that asm.js is turning out great. I also think that PNaCl is a worthy technical achievement. Two ways of solving the same problem given different constraints. I think Mozilla has a better chance and agree with their reasoning re- browser compatibility and third-party adoption. Still doesn't mean I'm going to go around calling PNaCl ActiveX when it clearly isn't.
Yeah yeah I get it. I like asm.js as much as the next person; I just wish this whole PNaCl-is-ActiveX meme would seriously go away. It's willful ignorance.
FWIW, I think it's fantastic that asm.js is turning out great. I also think that PNaCl is a worthy technical achievement. Two ways of solving the same problem given different constraints. I think Mozilla has a better chance and agree with their reasoning re- browser compatibility and third-party adoption. Still doesn't mean I'm going to go around calling PNaCl ActiveX when it clearly isn't.
Because PNaCl comes with its own implementations of input, graphics, audio, etc and cannot talk to any of the regular Web APIs. So basically, PNaCL is either ActiveX or it's Flash.
https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/pepperc/grou...
That said, I support using LLVM bitcode more than asm.js myself. I think asm.js is the dying breaths of JavaScript being hailed as its rebirth.
https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/pepperc/grou...
That said, I support using LLVM bitcode more than asm.js myself. I think asm.js is the dying breaths of JavaScript being hailed as its rebirth.
> That said, I support using LLVM bitcode more than asm.js myself. I think asm.js is the dying breaths of JavaScript being hailed as its rebirth.
I think asm.js has technical advantages over LLVM bitcode. Neither were really designed for this purpose (for LLVM, you must strip the undefined behavior; for JS, you must strip the high-level semantics), but at least JS has a fully specified, multi-vendor standard specifying the execution semantics. Plus asm.js has a very minimal type system and is non-SSA (while retaining high-level loop constructs that can be easily used to construct SSA without dominance frontiers if needed), both of which I think are advantages for delivering bytecode over the Web.
I think asm.js has technical advantages over LLVM bitcode. Neither were really designed for this purpose (for LLVM, you must strip the undefined behavior; for JS, you must strip the high-level semantics), but at least JS has a fully specified, multi-vendor standard specifying the execution semantics. Plus asm.js has a very minimal type system and is non-SSA (while retaining high-level loop constructs that can be easily used to construct SSA without dominance frontiers if needed), both of which I think are advantages for delivering bytecode over the Web.
That must be why asm.js v0.1 already introduced non-standard language extensions (imul) and has a roadmap full of more. Which browsers does the asm.js of today run on? And which browsers will the asm.js of the future run on?
So providing APIs designed for C and C++ (instead of gluing it to JavaScript APIs) makes PNaCl the same as either an unsandboxed, proprietary, closed-source, non-OS-portable, non-CPU-portable Microsoft technology from the 90s, or a proprietary, closed-source Adobe technlogy from the 2000s?
I think that may be a false dichotomy.
I think that may be a false dichotomy.
Well, PNaCl is poorly specified, difficult to implement for other browser vendors, and relies on a single implementation.
> PNaCl is poorly specified
Not sure that's fair: https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/reference/pn...
But even if all of those things was true, that makes it ok to call it ActiveX? By that logic I can call Firefox IE because it implements extensions to JavaScript that have not (yet) been standardized. But that wouldn't be fair and neither is calling PNaCl ActiveX.
Not sure that's fair: https://developers.google.com/native-client/dev/reference/pn...
But even if all of those things was true, that makes it ok to call it ActiveX? By that logic I can call Firefox IE because it implements extensions to JavaScript that have not (yet) been standardized. But that wouldn't be fair and neither is calling PNaCl ActiveX.
It loads, but I can't interact with anything here (Safari 7.0).
When I try to load the game in Safari 7.0 (on OS X 10.9), I get a Flash game, not asm.js.
I am not sure how to play the game. The intro messages reads:
{"success":false,"error":"DuplicateEntryException","message":"\u0027Anonymous1900\u0027 already exists."}
{"success":false,"error":"DuplicateEntryException","message":"\u0027Anonymous1900\u0027 already exists."}
$20 says it's a race condition being caused by multithreaded access to a nonatomic auto incrementing ID...
It works really well and I'm glad to see more of this happening. Being able to share games over the web that run at near-native performance levels without plugins has a lot of potential both for end-users and creators. Really cool stuff.
I just hope that it helps drive growth away from Internet Exploder ...
Unfortunately the "enterprise" seem set on it. Yesterday I was working with a new content management platform and I had to downgrade my Internet Explorer to 9 because it only works with IE 7,8 and 9. Then that still didn't work because of some MSXML problem I couldn't fix and I ended up having to use a VM with XP installed and IE 8.
Un-be-lievable. I don't know who these Enterprisey IT managers are who are making these decisions but they seem to have a lot of power which they are using irresponsibly. And they seem to love IE.
Un-be-lievable. I don't know who these Enterprisey IT managers are who are making these decisions but they seem to have a lot of power which they are using irresponsibly. And they seem to love IE.
I thought things had gotten better.
A decade ago the large company I worked for switched to a web based timecard system. The only problem, ie only and the software team of 50+ all were using hpux or solaris workstations. No ie. Oh and they wanted timecards done daily.
The solution?
Set up 2 terminals in the lab with a unix backend and a windows NT virtual environment so we can use IE to do timecards.
A decade ago the large company I worked for switched to a web based timecard system. The only problem, ie only and the software team of 50+ all were using hpux or solaris workstations. No ie. Oh and they wanted timecards done daily.
The solution?
Set up 2 terminals in the lab with a unix backend and a windows NT virtual environment so we can use IE to do timecards.
How complicated can/should a timecard system be? Surely one of those 50+ software engineers could have rewritten a portable version in a few days and saved you a lot of bother.
Is that really a bad thing? You have a known working VM image to access one particular system. It will never stop working. At worst we'll just run an x86 emulator on our 10GHz 60-core ARM-based phones.
We go through a lot of the same crud. The latest is they cannot push out IE 10 / 11 to everyone because it would require server upgrades (which is true, but very lame). :/
No. Given that IE previews support WebGL and typed arrays, asm.js should run just fine on them. This is entirely the point of asm.js!
It gives a fraction of the performance that Firefox gives you.
quick google, this guy[0] got
IE10 = 11900,
chrome = 22500,
firefox = 40000
[0]http://www.beyondjava.net/blog/google-adds-asm-js-test-octan...
If IE is giving you half the performance of the nearest, free, easily downloaded competitor in your favourite online game, you might be tempted to switch. And this is for the few users that are on IE10!
quick google, this guy[0] got
IE10 = 11900,
chrome = 22500,
firefox = 40000
[0]http://www.beyondjava.net/blog/google-adds-asm-js-test-octan...
If IE is giving you half the performance of the nearest, free, easily downloaded competitor in your favourite online game, you might be tempted to switch. And this is for the few users that are on IE10!
"Runs best in Mozilla Firefox" ;)
Two years ago when the tables were turned and Google announced Dart, which has the same compatibility strategy as asm.js (fastest with explicit support, falls back to regular JS), Brendan Eich had these harsh words for Google's move (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2982949):
I actually like asm.js and think it's a totally reasonable approach. I mention this only to highlight that maybe all of the bad-faith assumptions Google gets are not entirely deserved. Objectively these two are similar moves and I think they are both in good faith.
So "Works best in Chrome" and even "Works only in Chrome"
are new norms promulgated intentionally by Google. We see
more of this fragmentation every day. As a user of Chrome
and Firefox (and Safari), I find it painful to experience,
never mind the political bad taste.
I actually like asm.js and think it's a totally reasonable approach. I mention this only to highlight that maybe all of the bad-faith assumptions Google gets are not entirely deserved. Objectively these two are similar moves and I think they are both in good faith.
People are downvoting all my comments on this story, which are saying "I think Google and Mozilla are both acting in good faith to move the web forward."
Stay classy, Mozilla fans. I'm trying to be one of you but you're not making it easy.
Stay classy, Mozilla fans. I'm trying to be one of you but you're not making it easy.
Obviously I'm not Brendan or Chris Peterson, but I see there being two meanings of "works best in Firefox/Chrome": one of which is "Chrome/Firefox has a faster implementation of the standards" (which is what all browsers strive for—for the Web to "work best" in their browser), and the other of which is "Firefox/Chrome has a faster nonstandard implementation of X and there is a worse, standards-based fallback for browsers that don't support this vendor-specific extension", which is what I read Brendan's frustration as relevant to.
By "runs best in Firefox", I just meant that Firefox executed asm.js content faster than Chrome (though the same standards-based content is compatible with all browsers). Google's "works best in Chrome" demos usually depend on non-standard features or the phrase is just marketing text.
I can't speak for Brendan, but I think his comment linked above was concerned that Dart and NaCl promote proprietary content types.
The Dart language is an interesting but incremental improvement like CoffeeScript and TypeScript. The Dart VM is a dead end because Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla will never embed Google's Dart VM. If Google merged Dartium's VM into Chrome, web servers would serve proprietary Dart content to Chrome and "separate but equal" JS content (generated from Dart) to other browsers. That approach would require extra tooling and testing from web developers and open the door to Google services serving exclusively Dart content. Imagine if YouTube only supported Chrome.
I can't speak for Brendan, but I think his comment linked above was concerned that Dart and NaCl promote proprietary content types.
The Dart language is an interesting but incremental improvement like CoffeeScript and TypeScript. The Dart VM is a dead end because Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla will never embed Google's Dart VM. If Google merged Dartium's VM into Chrome, web servers would serve proprietary Dart content to Chrome and "separate but equal" JS content (generated from Dart) to other browsers. That approach would require extra tooling and testing from web developers and open the door to Google services serving exclusively Dart content. Imagine if YouTube only supported Chrome.
> proprietary Dart content
"proprietary" is unfair, and becomes more unfair all the time now that Dart is on its way to ECMA standardization: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57615494-92/google-convince...
If Dart is "proprietary," then so is asm.js, Mozilla Persona, Rust, and many other cool things that Mozilla is doing.
For example, take Persona. Mozilla invented, on its own, a new identity protocol which is not based on any existing standards and which it solely controls, released some code that implements it, and is trying to convince people to adopt it. When Google does the same kind of thing, it is called out as "proprietary."
> and open the door to Google services serving exclusively Dart content. Imagine if YouTube only supported Chrome.
This is exactly the kind of bad faith presumption that troubles me. Google is trying to push the web forward but in your mind their end game is to break its web properties for every browser except Chrome? This is so far from reality that I don't know how to respond to that, except to lament that distrust of Google by people associated with Mozilla is so high.
"proprietary" is unfair, and becomes more unfair all the time now that Dart is on its way to ECMA standardization: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57615494-92/google-convince...
If Dart is "proprietary," then so is asm.js, Mozilla Persona, Rust, and many other cool things that Mozilla is doing.
For example, take Persona. Mozilla invented, on its own, a new identity protocol which is not based on any existing standards and which it solely controls, released some code that implements it, and is trying to convince people to adopt it. When Google does the same kind of thing, it is called out as "proprietary."
> and open the door to Google services serving exclusively Dart content. Imagine if YouTube only supported Chrome.
This is exactly the kind of bad faith presumption that troubles me. Google is trying to push the web forward but in your mind their end game is to break its web properties for every browser except Chrome? This is so far from reality that I don't know how to respond to that, except to lament that distrust of Google by people associated with Mozilla is so high.
> "proprietary" is unfair, and becomes more unfair all the time now that Dart is on its way to ECMA standardization
By "proprietary", I mean only executable by one client.
I had not read about Dart's ECMA standardization process (TC52). I think that's great news, but to be fair, that announcement was made just two days ago:
http://news.dartlang.org/2013/12/ecma-forms-tc52-for-dart-st...
> If Dart is "proprietary," then so is asm.js, Mozilla Persona, Rust, and many other cool things that Mozilla is doing.
I don't think asm.js, Rust, dart2js, or Go are "proprietary" because their implementations are open and their output can be executed by multiple platforms or clients. Dart source files is only executable by Google's Dart VM.
> This is exactly the kind of bad faith presumption that troubles me. Google is trying to push the web forward but in your mind their end game is to break its web properties for every browser except Chrome?
I do not think Google is plotting to create a walled garden (unlike Microsoft of the 1990s). But I think many people at Mozilla worry about future timelines where proprietary systems could be created, even if they are the inadvertent, cumulative result of different product teams' decisions.
Consider Google Hangouts. When Hangouts was launched in May of this year, it included an NPAPI plugin to support other browsers like Firefox. But now, only seven months later, the Hangouts service is very popular but is only accessible from as a Chrome extension. The Firefox NPAPI plugin is no longer supported or available for download.
Or consider Chrome's announcement to drop NPAPI itself. NPAPI is the source of much woe and instability for Firefox, but NPAPI is a de facto standard for browser-independent content. Pepper, the proposed replacement, is only implemented by Chrome. The only version of the Adobe Flash Player that uses Pepper is the Chrome port maintained by Google engineers. (Disclosure: I work at Mozilla and I used to work on Adobe's Flash Player team.) A co-worker at Mozilla told me that he asked a friend on the Chrome team "How much of the Pepper API does Chrome's Flash Player use?" and the half-joking response was "150%" because Chrome's Flash Player relied on Chrome internals that were not exposed in the Pepper API.
Or consider Google's 2011 promise to drop support for H.264 from Chrome. Google had the leverage with YouTube to migrate content and clients from H.264 to WebM, but that never happened. Even today, many YouTube videos are not encoded as WebM and content creators have a strong incentive to publish H.264 videos because Google Ads only support YouTube's Flash player.
By "proprietary", I mean only executable by one client.
I had not read about Dart's ECMA standardization process (TC52). I think that's great news, but to be fair, that announcement was made just two days ago:
http://news.dartlang.org/2013/12/ecma-forms-tc52-for-dart-st...
> If Dart is "proprietary," then so is asm.js, Mozilla Persona, Rust, and many other cool things that Mozilla is doing.
I don't think asm.js, Rust, dart2js, or Go are "proprietary" because their implementations are open and their output can be executed by multiple platforms or clients. Dart source files is only executable by Google's Dart VM.
> This is exactly the kind of bad faith presumption that troubles me. Google is trying to push the web forward but in your mind their end game is to break its web properties for every browser except Chrome?
I do not think Google is plotting to create a walled garden (unlike Microsoft of the 1990s). But I think many people at Mozilla worry about future timelines where proprietary systems could be created, even if they are the inadvertent, cumulative result of different product teams' decisions.
Consider Google Hangouts. When Hangouts was launched in May of this year, it included an NPAPI plugin to support other browsers like Firefox. But now, only seven months later, the Hangouts service is very popular but is only accessible from as a Chrome extension. The Firefox NPAPI plugin is no longer supported or available for download.
Or consider Chrome's announcement to drop NPAPI itself. NPAPI is the source of much woe and instability for Firefox, but NPAPI is a de facto standard for browser-independent content. Pepper, the proposed replacement, is only implemented by Chrome. The only version of the Adobe Flash Player that uses Pepper is the Chrome port maintained by Google engineers. (Disclosure: I work at Mozilla and I used to work on Adobe's Flash Player team.) A co-worker at Mozilla told me that he asked a friend on the Chrome team "How much of the Pepper API does Chrome's Flash Player use?" and the half-joking response was "150%" because Chrome's Flash Player relied on Chrome internals that were not exposed in the Pepper API.
Or consider Google's 2011 promise to drop support for H.264 from Chrome. Google had the leverage with YouTube to migrate content and clients from H.264 to WebM, but that never happened. Even today, many YouTube videos are not encoded as WebM and content creators have a strong incentive to publish H.264 videos because Google Ads only support YouTube's Flash player.
Dart compiles to Javascript that runs very well on IE9 and up, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
Chrome does not run Dart natively.
Chrome does not run Dart natively.
I'm not really sure these two are different. How is dart2js "worse" than the Dart VM, except for speed? And even in speed, dart2js is faster than hand-written JS in many cases (see https://www.dartlang.org/performance/)
With source maps Dart is debuggable from JS AFAIK. And dart.js allows deploying Dart content in a way that works seamlessly whether or not the Dart VM is present. I'm really not seeing the difference here.
With source maps Dart is debuggable from JS AFAIK. And dart.js allows deploying Dart content in a way that works seamlessly whether or not the Dart VM is present. I'm really not seeing the difference here.
asm.js really shines for usecases like this, the fact that they did the port in a week is truly remarkable. GFX/Audio/Multiplayer all works fine, but loading times are pretty slow on Chrome, but for a first version this seems great.
Edit it seems pretty playable in firefox and chrome, don't notice much of a difference performance wise. Now please make a reverse case for PNaCL and pepper.js and we can all get really excited :)
Edit it seems pretty playable in firefox and chrome, don't notice much of a difference performance wise. Now please make a reverse case for PNaCL and pepper.js and we can all get really excited :)
I feel like "compatible with all modern browsers" is a little dishonest as long as Apple keeps dragging their feet with WebGL in iOS. I know that this isn't an asm.js problem, but the implication is that you can make a game like this which runs in all modern browsers, and that's simply not true yet.
I would argue that a browser without WebGL is not a "modern browser". WebGL is part of what a browser is today, and it works (and is on by default) in recent versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
I agree in some sense, but the honesty of a statement depends partly on how the audience can reasonably be expected to interpret it. And you can reasonably expect an audience to interpret "modern web browser" to include any major browser released within the last year.
I disagree, when IE8 and 9 came out, and within a year of their release, did many people consider them "modern browsers"? I don't think so. (Only with IE10 and really with 11 did Microsoft's browser be worthy of that designation.)
New != Modern
New != Modern
While I really see potential of asm.js couple of things about execution (including this title)
1. Brings my browser to its knees (Firefox here)
2. Security. They seem to open themselves up to a whole lot of potential hacks (I hope their code deals with cookie jacking, csrf, sniffing, etc). While this would be a problem with closed source, this is made worse by running it in browser
3. Cheaters. How would they deal with people injecting code and creating bots?
1. Brings my browser to its knees (Firefox here)
2. Security. They seem to open themselves up to a whole lot of potential hacks (I hope their code deals with cookie jacking, csrf, sniffing, etc). While this would be a problem with closed source, this is made worse by running it in browser
3. Cheaters. How would they deal with people injecting code and creating bots?
2. It's javascript running in the browser, it can't do anything that you couldn't already do with javascript running in the browser.
3. The same way that companies currently cope with clients. It's not like client-hacking isn't so common-place that you have to design around it anyway.
3. The same way that companies currently cope with clients. It's not like client-hacking isn't so common-place that you have to design around it anyway.
2: There's always the option to run the game iframed, served from a subdomain or similar.
3: Cheating has always been possible, in all games. The minified javascript source is still hard to grasp for a game that size.
3: Cheating has always been possible, in all games. The minified javascript source is still hard to grasp for a game that size.
Is there a possibility for major titles becoming "asm.js ports"? Games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Battlefield series, Starcraft 2, Minecraft, etc.
Major desktop titles probably not but major mobile titles definitely yes [1].
WebGL + asm.js on desktop computers should be roughly equivalent to native iOS / Android applications on top-of-the-line mobile devices (with possibility to get better effects on desktop GPUs).
This is btw what's going on with these very fast Emscripten ports - they can be done so quickly because the bulk of the hardest work was already done before, when engine and game developers made their code and maybe even more importantly their assets work well on mobile devices.
If you noticed many of these fast Emscripten ports were not desktop ports but had already existing mobile versions before - Unreal Engine Citadel demo, Unigine Crypt demo, and now Monster Madness.
Nevertheless it's still very impressive, big kudos to Mozilla folks.
-----
[1] For example these iOS 3d games should be feasible on the web (runtime performance wise, big asset downloads may be pain): The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Grand Theft Auto 3 / Vice City, Infinity Blade series, Max Payne 1, Mirror's Edge, XCom: Enemy Unknown, Real Racing, Asphalt series, mobile Need for Speed series, etc.
Plus of course anything 2D - Angry Birds, World of Goo, Plants vs Zombies, Osmos, Limbo, etc.
WebGL + asm.js on desktop computers should be roughly equivalent to native iOS / Android applications on top-of-the-line mobile devices (with possibility to get better effects on desktop GPUs).
This is btw what's going on with these very fast Emscripten ports - they can be done so quickly because the bulk of the hardest work was already done before, when engine and game developers made their code and maybe even more importantly their assets work well on mobile devices.
If you noticed many of these fast Emscripten ports were not desktop ports but had already existing mobile versions before - Unreal Engine Citadel demo, Unigine Crypt demo, and now Monster Madness.
Nevertheless it's still very impressive, big kudos to Mozilla folks.
-----
[1] For example these iOS 3d games should be feasible on the web (runtime performance wise, big asset downloads may be pain): The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Grand Theft Auto 3 / Vice City, Infinity Blade series, Max Payne 1, Mirror's Edge, XCom: Enemy Unknown, Real Racing, Asphalt series, mobile Need for Speed series, etc.
Plus of course anything 2D - Angry Birds, World of Goo, Plants vs Zombies, Osmos, Limbo, etc.
Minecraft in the browser has been done already, hasn't it? It'd be pretty trivial, as it's been ported to java / c# / objective c already, and has low system requirements.
Given that asm.js games tend to run at something like 15-30% of the speed of native code, I doubt we'll see Battlefield 4 or Starcraft 2 anytime soon. Additionally, given that the WoW game client is many gigabytes in size, I doubt we'll see that either, even if it could run.
So: Minecraft, yes. The rest? No.
Given that asm.js games tend to run at something like 15-30% of the speed of native code, I doubt we'll see Battlefield 4 or Starcraft 2 anytime soon. Additionally, given that the WoW game client is many gigabytes in size, I doubt we'll see that either, even if it could run.
So: Minecraft, yes. The rest? No.
There have been minecraft like demos that implement about 1% of the functionality of minecraft.
Citation on the 15-30% claim? We see more like 50%, including compilation time. Sometimes much faster on certain benchmarks (Bullet IIRC?) now that float32 support has landed.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/12/monster-madness-creating-g...
This is from a link in the article for more information. These Monster Madness fellows found Firefox gave them 33% of native performance, and Chrome 20%. Presumably IE would give you fractions of these figures.
I figured that, rather than citing figures from benchmarks, I'd go for the real world scenario that this release has given us.
This is from a link in the article for more information. These Monster Madness fellows found Firefox gave them 33% of native performance, and Chrome 20%. Presumably IE would give you fractions of these figures.
I figured that, rather than citing figures from benchmarks, I'd go for the real world scenario that this release has given us.
Those figures seem to be in the context of a week long initial port. The team lead uses a figure of 50% in the video.
Also, much of these games is 3D rendering, and WebGL runs at essentially full native performance.
Minecraft is FAR bigger and more complicated than people give it credit for. Getting a terrain generation demo running in a browser is not even remotely the same thing.
Minecraft started as a Java browser plugin game. I think that's what the GP is referring to, not "Show HN: Minecraft in 3 lines of Javascript"
https://minecraft.net/classic/
https://minecraft.net/classic/
I think he's talking about the apps for the various ecosystems. Although they're not feature-complete.
Well, no, they're not as rich as the desktop versions.
But as they've had a team port (a trimmed version of) Minecraft to xbox live arcade, and the iPad, it would surprise me if they're not already working on a *.js version.
But as they've had a team port (a trimmed version of) Minecraft to xbox live arcade, and the iPad, it would surprise me if they're not already working on a *.js version.
Is it that big of a leap from voxel.js, which is already doing this with pure javascript? (genuinely curious)
The WoW client already supports streaming, you can play the game after downloading only the core content. Even that is pretty large though, but it could be optimized for the web.
Trying to open this up on Chrome to see whether it works, it can't download files, because the S3 bucket doesn't give an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header.
Can they put a CORS configuration up? http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/cors.html#how... and http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/UG/EditingBucketP...
Can they put a CORS configuration up? http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/cors.html#how... and http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/UG/EditingBucketP...
Mozilla need to tone down the disingenuous marketing as it's going to bite the otherwise worthy asm.js in the long run.
The problem is that video fails to explicitly point out that the only version relying on asm.js is the browser version, which is the least interesting, while they're all excited about different devices those are all supported thanks to Unreal's cross platform support and has nothing to do with the asm.js version.
The problem is that video fails to explicitly point out that the only version relying on asm.js is the browser version, which is the least interesting, while they're all excited about different devices those are all supported thanks to Unreal's cross platform support and has nothing to do with the asm.js version.
The video was not made by us, it was made by the game developers. This particular video (and blog post) is about the asm.js port of the game (and other possible solutions), not about the game itself.
Isn't the connection that Unreal's cross platform support was written in C or C++ and they ported it to a web browser in a week by compiling that to asm.js?
this is quite remarkable
this is C++. now all javascript folks need to learn C and C++.
Only if they want ultra-high performance, for writing games and suchlike.
Otherwise they can stick to javascript.
(And, of course, anything else that compiles to javascript)
Otherwise they can stick to javascript.
(And, of course, anything else that compiles to javascript)
You can also mix the two, write typical JS and use a high-performance library from JS for something specific, like physics
http://kripken.github.io/box2d.js/webgl_demo/box2d.html
http://kripken.github.io/box2d.js/webgl_demo/box2d.html
To be fair, if you want ultra-high performance for high quality 3d games, why did you learn javascript? Go away and learn C or C++ ...
This doesn't give anything to web developers. It gives C / C++ developers a way onto the web.
This doesn't give anything to web developers. It gives C / C++ developers a way onto the web.
Well, you can also write asm.js code manually to squeeze out performance, if you need to.
it's faster to learn C and all the toolchain than writing any meaningfull code in asm.js directly, asm.js is not javascript, as strange as it sounds.
I don't mean to write your app in it, I mean using it for optimising tight loops and such, just as C developers occasionally write some functions in asm for performance.
> To be fair, if you want ultra-high performance for high quality 3d games, why did you learn javascript?
That's not fair at all, because there are valid answers to that question like "Because I also want my programs to run in the browser."
That's not fair at all, because there are valid answers to that question like "Because I also want my programs to run in the browser."
Until recently, that was a contradictory set of goals. Now it's pretty feasible to achieve both goals using C++. But, not so much with hand-written JS... (Feasible, not arguing theoretical)
Kindasorta. They do contradict if you only write one program. But you could write a high-performance 3D game and a web app and achieve both goals, thus justifying learning both JavaScript and C++.
What makes you think that many web developers don't already know C/C++?
Many developers choose the web because there is their audience, their business, their future. And we know that people don't like to install stuffs, they want to consume a product LIVE.
Many developers choose the web because there is their audience, their business, their future. And we know that people don't like to install stuffs, they want to consume a product LIVE.
> Only if they want ultra-high performance, for writing games and suchlike.
CUSTOMERS want ultra high performances, especially on mobile. Therefore businesses will have to deliver these performances.
Trust me, in a few years , getting a good client-side gig will mean knowing C/C++ .
The limitation today is the size of the "js" code produced, which is way too heavy.
CUSTOMERS want ultra high performances, especially on mobile. Therefore businesses will have to deliver these performances.
Trust me, in a few years , getting a good client-side gig will mean knowing C/C++ .
The limitation today is the size of the "js" code produced, which is way too heavy.
It's interesting but didn't Quake Live run inside the browser?
Quake Live used a native plugin actually, it was basically a regular native game running inside the browser's chrome.
It was using some kind of custom browser plugin. Which on one hand allowed it to run normal, compiled-to-binary Quake III engine, on the other it worked only in selected browsers.
I really wish iOS enabled WebGL in Safari. Not sure why they don't, because it's available in web views on their iAd web view, and thus technically possible.
I often wonder if they are just concerned about delegitimizing their app market to some degree. Flash gave a similar threat.
It runs pretty slow with newest nvidia drivers on a 2 year old lenovo laptop with a decent graphics card. Getting sub 10fps. It's impressive that it works though.
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'createBuffer' of undefined
blob:http%3A//www.playverse.com/5295321b-d5f5-4862-8065-821e3ded7e1d:5046
On my iPhone, when I go to play Monster Madness it takes me to apple.com - any reason?
The future is here, in 1/4 of the time I thought it would take. I guess I have to go write a new prediction.
Edit: The lesson here is that if you want to predict the future, try to do it by making a prediction so ridiculous it could only be a joke.