Unity 5 WebGL == mobile browser support?

Hey all,

As I understand, Unity 5 will support WebGL. Now does that basically mean HTML5 support? From what I see, a lot of browsers don't support WebGL... especially mobile browsers. So is it really that great an option? I obviously like the idea, but it doesn't seem to be great for mobile web. iOS devices seem to disable WebGL by default-- so is this just replacing a barrier with another?

Would love to get some insight here, I don't know much about HTML5/WebGL.

Thanks

 

I actually tested the Angry Bots WebGL version on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and even though it didn't run perfectly it did actually run and that's totally awesome!

 

Thanks Graham and DSSiege for clearing that up, I was about if the new export unto WebGL would be sustainable on the Mobile Platform/Device. Also I always had though HTML5 was an upgrade to the HTML language and that WebGL was a rendering library for HTML or other net languages. Though I believe the question remains about its position on its deployment status.

 

And I'm assuming Unity can't build out without WebGL? I've definitely seen HTML5 games work on mobile Safari, but seems like WebGL is a no go.

 

HTML5 has devolved into little more than a buzzword meaning "relatively modern browser features". So I'm grateful UT decided to be more precise and call it WebGL to refer to the actual technology that it's using.

As for mobile browsers, lol no. Here's a page that shows browser support for WebGL. iOS and Android are the two big red bars. (Chrome for Android, however, does have it, which is kind of cool)

 

HTML5 doesn't refer to HyperText Markup Language version 5 like you think it would - it's a specification for a variety of technologies, some of which explicitly involved in the specification, like XHTML or whatever they are calling it now, CSS 3, Canvas and so on, and some kind of 'grey area' technologies like WebGL, which isn't automatically assumed to be implemented in any browser claiming to meet the HTML 5 specification

If you're talking 3D and HTML5 however you'd be referring to either CSS 3's 3D, which is NOT appropriate for the kind of paradigm Unity works under, and WebGL, which is and happens to equate to the current, latest OGLES spec - So a mobile phone appertaining to the specification could in a perfect world be equivalent to the WebGL spec. That's my understanding of it anyway. It's not a perfect world however and many browsers and hardware manufacturers do love to play fast and loose with specifications but generally you could expect firefox and chrome to keep a pretty respectable adherence to the specification - go to the #webgl room on irc.freenode and you'll get to talk to lots of people who know a ton about it all and can be a massive education. I was lucky enough to talk to both firefox engineers and this guy http://codeflow.org/ a couple of years back on the subject and i'm tempted to go back some time soon, especially when webgl becomes back as a concern of mine which it inevitably will do.

Making not-for-profit performance intensive games makes WebGL a no brainer for anyone with a decent internet connection

I'd like to point out that WebGL can run fine on some, if not all, android mobile phones, mine for eg is fine with it iirc, as is my previous and also my partners. Apple are being typically irritating and closed on the matter. Just like iOs supports OpenCL but only Apple can use it, similarly, bizarrely, apparently WebGL is functional for iAds but not their mobile browsers.

I am hoping Apple change their attitude or are simply letting everything mature until letting the peons have at it, but for now I find WebGL for Unity in regular edesktop browsers the exciting thing and while it may take a while to fully develop, it's a great move that i'm very happy about. I've mentioned potential problems in usability on this forum before and I hope Unity both mention it as a consideration and also provide answers for it but that aside it's great. And may well run on your android phone if you have an expensive one

 

Oop Jonas beat me to most of the punches - Jonas has there been any discussion about documentation or a service for dealing with any CORS related problems? With WebGL as a platform it would/should be almost trivial to stream in content from another domain using traditional web methods and something a lot of people might try, and get a headache with, as soon as it doesn't work and they're not sure why not.

 

Oops sorry hasty trigger finger

 

Does that mean touch isn't supported? Or just its performance is not fast enough(The demos were pretty slow on Intel HD4000 and 0fps on GT19100)

 

I was wondering if there was some existing service or UT could provide one for simply adding necessary headers to requests during-flight. Making the innately web-natured characteristics of WebGL a selling point of the platform for Unity could bring about some powerful features that are already well documented pretty much everywhere, not just Unity's scripting API. Stuff like being able to bring in content from your own storage using web methods rather than unity's WWW, that storage being anywhere - it's very flexible. Even using other HTML5 specs even in the 'grey area' like WebRTC that naturally 'fit in' with WebGL would be impressive.

I suppose I wonder if WebGL will be used simply as a basis by which to function as normal within a browser, or you'll be allowing devs to use the full flexibility implied by using WebGL to leverage other parts of the HTML5 specification

So in fact when you say 'Unity is implementing HTML 5' that's actually a much bigger deal than people seem to realise

 

That's exactly what i wanted to read aha, i guess really it's not so much a matter of Unity implementing things within its own API, but giving users the freedom to use the platform's strengths within Unity themselves - you gave a great example. Would you be able to, say, have an overlay to where the main game rendering was drawn called from c# in the game (Typical to your example) to establish a video chat via webRTC drawn where you specified? So assuming webRTC is browser supported (Quite sure it is now, in Firefox and Chrome) then by publishing to WebGL you can very easily implement something like that?

Would the game's output be an element as flexible as any other in the pages' DOM?

That would make Unity the most powerful WebGL 'editor' going if there's minimal overhead as far as I know? That would justify the license fee considerably for many things

 

any update?

 

Does anyone have some experience with WebGL on mobile browsers? Does Unity WebGL game work in mobile browser?I've tried to open Angry bots demo on my tablet(both iPad and Android) but didn't have luck.

 

WebGL is still a not good choice for mobile. Look at the topic. 2 years have passed. They are still feeding us this "open and cloudless" "html5" future. Pathetic.