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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

What's the usecase for Google building a PBR? Is it just a "we're huge so let's have a foot in everything" deal? Or do they have some novel insight that could put it above and beyond the status quo?

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> This is not an officially supported Google product.

Basically when Google employees ask permission to work on a side project, Google asks them to release it open source under Google's GitHub but mark it as not an official Google product. This is probably something the authors work on nights/weekends and not anything to do with their work.

Oof, that's a pretty draconian constraint. Glad I don't work at Google.

You can also request that you obtain total control over the project (not hosted by google, not copyrighted by google) but those requests are hard to get approved.

> but those requests are hard to get approved.

I had no problems getting approval for a tiny 2D home-trainer game I worked on this winter..

I suppose it varies depending on what you do. But if you work on part of it during 20% time, you probably can't do this.

disclaimer: I work at Google.

It makes sense when you want to use your open source project at work, rather than having it completely separate from work. It might be possible to work on it as 20% time if it’s plausible that projects at Google might use it. You could talk about it at promotion time. And at the same time, you’ll still be able to use it if you leave the company.

This is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Most code you work on at work isn’t open source at all.

Alternatively, you could have a side project that’s completely separate from your job.

The GP made it sound like you can't just have a side project that's completely separate from your job; that side projects are Google's by default unless you go out of your way to get permission to separate it out

In most jurisdictions that wouldn't even be allowed by the country law.

Google or any other company would have very hard time forbidding what employees do on their free time outside work, regardless of what they feel like putting on the work contract.

In the U.S. contracts along those lines are (unfortunately) not uncommon. I think they may be illegal in California at least

I am aware of it, however companies like Google should know better than trying to use US contracts on other countries, that was my point.

Having worked at Google myself, quite honestly, I don't think there is a use case. Romain and Mathias are both very senior engineers. They get a lot of freedom to to work on whatever they desire.

Originally it was presented as part of Sceneform.

https://developers.google.com/sceneform/develop

But like all big plans presented at Google IO it eventually joined Google graveyard, and apparently they kept on working on Filament alone.

Filament is used at Google.

> Filament is used at Google.

What is it being used for?

The Status Quo in 3d is always moving ahead. Having another good open source PBR Renderer available can be hugely beneficial. Game engines with non-state-of-the-art renderers coudl try to integrate it - or more general: any app that wants to display realtime 3d content in a convincing way could benefit from it - most 3d content creation pipelines nowadays are tailored towards PBR (f.e. Metal/Roughness Workflow). If it focuses on mobile then it probably also perform well on desktops. Sadly, no DX support.

Google Earth?

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