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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

Ironically Google is now beginning the first steps of forcing the bulk of Chrome/ium users back to Firefox by removing the API ublock needs, Firefox which has no WebGPU support and renders WebGL as a stuttery mess, so all of this extensive work may have been for nothing. Back to the dark ages we go.

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wgpu is the main rust crate for webgpu rendering, and it's what Firefox is using for it's experimental webgpu support. It's also enabled by default in Firefox nightly builds. I don't think it'll be long before it ships in stable.

wgpu and WebGPU aren't just for browsers. They can be used in native programs as well. They're primarily a way of unifying platform APIs to produce a portable graphics target.

Middleware engines are much better for that purpose than APIs limited by the constraints of targeting the Web browser.

In case you care about using the actual GPU capabilities, and not a 10 year old API.

In "the dark ages" as you put it, we didn't conflate the browser with the operating system.

Well, the dark ages of web browsers. But well, for casual users that would be playing games made with such engines, the browser might as well be the OS.

Yeah, we just broke out of the sandox and ran browser games with random Java and Flash we downloaded from strangers.

Y'know, the good old days.

Don't forget ActiveX!

Those 3d games were pretty standout amidst the Macromedia/Adobe/Shockwave/Flash platformers on Miniclip.

fwiw Chrome on Linux has no WebGPU support or hardware acceleration, so I often use Firefox for e.g. playing Ruffle content. The story is different on different platforms, and will slowly improve.

Also, I think you are overestimating how many people will switch.

I installed the ublock lite and the web looks the same to me. Perhaps I'm not going to the right places, but not many ads are getting through to me.

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