how about WebGPU

For what the big players in the industry want to do with it, WebGL is useless to them ... too many limitations.

It's only us that can appreciate it i guess.

But they say "dead" only as in it will not be developed further.

WebGL2 will stay with us for years and years to come ( correct me if I am wrong)

I'm not excited cuz I don't have a use for multithreading, as I'd rather just spread my calculations across many frames and provide a temporal solution to whatever problem I want to solve.

They are promising so much ... but I am afraid that if they only care about money, they will just focus of making it worj on powerful and new devices/GPUs, while with old/current devices they have less inventive to work on compatability.

 

Can I ask you if anything is being done with physics in Webgl?

I am learning how to do it myself, similar to how quake and Deus Ex were doing it (very simple and barebone), but all the solutions I see around either

A) introduce Interpolation to be able to look smooth, which causes bugs and de_sync with transforms, or

B) "solve" the problem by requiring corrective repositioning in LateUpdate, or additional Joint Logic, which eats even more performance.

Physx is good, but unfortunately if you let it handle collision detection, you will see precious milliseconds used just for that, for Objects/agents that have yet to read the environment with raycasts to actually know where they are and how to respond.

All to attempt a "realism" that in my case I'd rather have " reliability and performance".

 

So for now the best practice is to create "manager" scripts that act like jobs, as in they AT LEAST minimize the script state changes on the CPU ... if that's how they are called.

Although, from future DOTS programmers, it will look hillarious, as this way you get very little to none of the benefit, but with the annoyance of having a more complex code

 

What I don't understand is why
1) Gravity is treated NOT like all other forces. As in, if gravity is applied but sleep treshold is met the rg_ goes to sleep, while constant forces require a //Cast to be disabled.

and

2) Why PhysX can't optimize interpolation based on distance travelled, and WE have to set it with a script based on necessity.

 

Is there any way that WebGPU's compute shaders will make OnAudioFilterRead access and usage possible on the web?

It seems it still won't allow multithreading, but could a "thread" be made as a compute shader for audio processing and then assigned as the OnAudioFilterRead "thread"?

 

What beta/alpha/release version of Unity is WebGPU support expected to be seen?

 

Read the thread, its mentionned.

 

I saw in the recent Unity GDC talk that they are adding multi-threading support to WebGL in 2022 LTS, will this not also be coming to WebGPU?

I believe 2022 LTS was just released today

 

I don't think so.

Plus, Microsoft suggests sticking with 2021, as there were loading, performance and compatibility problems

I'll rejoyce into being proved wrong tho.

 

I assume both the new "Unity Physics" and "Havok physics" packages (available after ver. 2022) are to be not even considered for us WebGL devs, correct?

 

I don’t know how limited this version is, but Babylon.js now have wasm version of havoc physics!

https://babylonjs.medium.com/announcing-babylon-js-6-0-dcb5f1662e3a

 

For the following comment on WebGPU in Unity I would like to say I am not affiliated with Unity just so people know.

For anyone wondering about WebGPU in Unity the snap shot below will make you very happy.
This is doable in a currently public build that can be downloaded in Unity Hub right now.

Due note please do not ask the Unity devs when it will becoming. They are hard working on it and doing a great job with it.

At the moment a couple Emscripten bugs need worked out. If you have both WebGPU and WebGL active it won't build and you get some Emscripten errors while trying to build. This includes having Graphics API set to auto.

By what I am assuming when this bug is fixed they will make it seeable in the alphas.
At the moment to see the WebGPU option I have to write an Editor function to show the WebGPU option in the Player Settings.

You can not see it by default because it is not ready yet, but the fact it is in the Engine already means the Unity devs have been doing an amazing job and working very hard to bring this to us.

Thank you Unity devs for your hard work.

 

What Unity version is it?

 

This is using Unity 2023.2 Alpha 19. You will want to use this version of Unity if you even want to make the option available.

Because it is not ready yet, the option is not visible normally inside of the editor so do be warned.
To be able to see it you need to write a custom editor function to enable WebGPU.
It can be done in a only a couple lines though.

For anyone seeing this do note this is not ready yet for building. There is a good reason they have not made the option normally seeable in editor yet. Just wanted to let people know huge progress has been made on it for anyone wondering if Unity is taking this part of Web Development seriously.

This is my guess and only my guess so don't hold any Unity developer to it.
In Unity 2023.2 we will have WebGPU or at least the first stages of being able to build with it.
Last release of it had C# Reference code added into the .net project solution or enabling it which is why I was able to make it appear.


Message for the Unity dev team.
Thank you for your hard work. Don't know if we as community members say it enough, but we appreciate everything you have been doing to make our lives as game developers easier.
Hope you guys know your work is vastly welcomed and is not taken for granted by most devs.


https://docs.unity3d.com/2023.2/Documentation/ScriptReference/PlayerSettings.WebGL-enableWebGPU.html

 

Did some tests and I found it was actually not an issue in a blank project.
Created a blank project for 2D URP and did a build of WebGPU/WebGL enables and it built and ran perfectly.

Not sure if it is a Unity Package I had in my project or something else.
Spending time today and debugging it for you. If I figure out a place I can point in the direction that the build fails I will update here.

I am thinking it might be something I was working with for Unity Collections Package, but I don't want to say yet, because I don't want to raise false flags until I know more concrete information.

But by the error I think it might have to do with a certain way I was using Spans with Unity Collections Package.
I backported from newer .net some of the AsSpan functions for List and other types of Collections.
Some of the code uses Unity Collections Package functionality in ways that I had to tweak to work for WebGL due to the thread limitation on the platform.

It worked up till Unity 2023.2 Alpha 19 when I first enabled WebGPU.
Will try and add some build reports testing to get to the root of the problem.
Due note when this happens it doesn't just fail as build in some cases it crashes Unity Editor all together

 

So got it working now. It isn't an issue with something on Unity's side. It was a custom script that was adding AsSpan support for somethings that was originally added in .net 6, but I backported it to Unity.

Messing with it I managed to get builds working. Only thing is possibly updating some shader documentation.
Do we have a list of different Shader structs functions we need to update for custom shaders?
Using URP with HLSL.

 

Should the VFX Graph work?
Unity 2023.2.0a20
URP + VFX Graph both versions 16.0.2
I tried to use the basic samples in the VFX Graph package, but even in the editor, when I'm in Editor+Windows platform, VFX works.
Once switched to Web platform in editor, gets "Invalid VFX Particle System. It is skipped."
And after build, get the same error in web console.
My guess is that VFX Graph is disabled on web.

 

Would you be okay if I linked to some WebGPU documentation. Mainly documentation related to things like WGSL.
Mainly I just want to help people wanting to learn more about WebGPU technology.

For those that are just now researching into WebGPU WGSL stands for WebGPU Shading Language.

WebGPU API uses WGSL to allow for shaders to run on the GPU from the browser.
Think of allowing stuff like possible compute shaders in the browser window.

It might be a good idea for people wanting to learn more about WebGPU to have links for things like the following.

• Shader Stage in the pipeline.
  
• Entry Point Functions
• Different supported math functions
• Current supported browsers and links to WIP official browser support repos for those browsers.

The list could go on for resources we could share with the community.

Could also be worth mentioning things like Project Dawn.
Dawn is the open source cross platform implementation being worked on as a WebGPU Standard.

Could even add links to stuff like Kronos groups document updates PDF files they release on work being done in WebGPU currently.

 

I could be wrong about VFX graphs below, but I am almost sure of it so take the following with a grain of salt.

So VFX Graph as I understand uses compute shaders and that is why WebGL itself doesn't support them.
WebGPU is one of the things that will let VFX Graphs work in browser, but I don't know if they have finished the
Computer Shader implementation yet.

I can take a look tonight for you and test out some stuff with WebGPU and the VFX graph.
For WebGPU I already got some working builds so no problem at all to test that out for you.

If you want to test it out yourself quickly. Try the following code in the Unity linked documentation below.
It returns a boolean if compute shaders are supported in the current platform.
If this return false than VFX Graphs haven't been fully implemented yet in Unity WebGPU builds.
Just remember sometimes the code return based on the editor platform aka the platform Unity is actually using to test your game in play mode in and not the actual build platform.

So might want to test this code in an actual build.

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SystemInfo-supportsComputeShaders.html

 

Just checking for the VFX Graph Compute Shader comment was that the correct info.
Want to make sure my thought process about some of the VFX Graph needing Compute Shaders to work fully is correct so I don't say the wrong information.

 

I'm so excited to use VFX Graph for the web !
Do you have an idea when the "milestone 2" from Google will come ? Is it still playable for 2023 or not before 2024?
I had another question: will WebGPU improve SkinnedMeshRenderer performance in some way?

 

On what scenarios we can already see performance improvements over Unity WebGL?
I tried some particle systems and got similar stats for WebGL2 and WebGPU.

 

@brendanduncan_u3d Hi. I try to use a video player and RT with WebGPU backend. It seems that it won't work. WebGPU is using external texture and binding group style to render the video. The original WebGL gl.texImage2D is not working. Is there a way to achieve this?

I found JS_WebGPU_ImportExternalTexture in WebGPU.js and I want to attach my own video tag to a materail. Is there a way to use it manually with my own video tag which is defined in the html template?

 

@brendanduncan_u3d Hi. Here's some screenshot of my personal hobby project. I use it to show live broadcasting. So it's not a simple URL source. It is able to implement this in WebGL. I would like to test it with WebGPU.

 

Hi @brendanduncan_u3d , is there any update on the support of arbitrary video tag?
I'm encountering memory copy performance issue in Unity WebGL. I can see frame drop when the video count is over 5. But it's ok for 5 or less. The fps is 20 or below.

The lack of the support of arbitrary video tag blocking me migrating my project to it. And also, I did some pre research with native WebGPU and my video. I can see that my video is able to hit the 0-copy path. It may improve the performance of project.

 

@brendanduncan_u3d thanks for having kept us informed about these developments. exciting times!

one question is regarding the longstanding misnomer of Unity's "WebGL" platform. as you know, WebGL is just a graphics API, not the entire platform of the "Web" that includes WebAssembly and many other standards and protocols. as WebGPU comes into play as a new optional graphics API for the Web platform, do you have any word that a platform rename is being considered?

Selecting WebGL as the platform and then selecting WebGPU (explicitly or implicitly) as the graphics API would be akin to have named the entire Windows platform "DirectX11" and then selecting DirectX12 as the graphics API. It's a user experience / flow and cultural language nightmare. There's even a fair amount of confusion in this very thread about platform vs graphics API, and we can't blame anyone for it in this context

So, this seems like the perfect time to reconcile this and reduce confusion and frustration for future generations. ( multiple render pipelines are confusing enough in the Unity onboarding process, and the Web is an extremely attractive platform across all industries that will attract many new and returning developers. )

thanks for all your work and the team's

 

It is mentioned in the thread they are renaming it.

 

aha, thank you. it i missed that and this as well as which confirms that there are internal discussions about a rename.

at the very least i hope my earlier post may provide some talking points for these discussions.

 

Hello, When will the next version be added? Will the next version of webgpu be officially released?

 

@brendanduncan_u3d will HDRP be supported? What about APV?