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Comment by pcwalton | Hacker News Reader

> At least on Windows there's a serious effort to give me as much of the machine's power as possible.

What is asm.js (and WebGL, for that matter) if not that?

WebGL is a deliberately limited but secure sandbox based on a spec for mobile devices that is two major releases out of date and makes an Xbox 360 look like science fiction.

Asm.js is an enormous hack where we limit the computational expressiveness of performance critical code by the semantics and standard library of a language notoriously shit at it.

> WebGL is a deliberately limited but secure sandbox based on a spec for mobile devices that is two major releases out of date and makes an Xbox 360 look like science fiction.

Unreal Engine 4 is a counterexample.

> Asm.js is an enormous hack where we limit the computational expressiveness of performance critical code by the semantics and standard library of a language notoriously shit at it.

How is it limited?

To be honest, the video in TFA looks like something out of a 2009 game, it's not particularly impressive. And I guess it'll probably be a rolling demo, not having the requirements of a complete game that also has to handle a bunch of computationally expensive stuff like collisions, game logic etc.

"Unreal Engine 4" is marketing buzzspeak. WebGL is modelled after OpenGL ES 2. Its GLSL support is massively outdated. It lacks features like multiple render targets (used by any deferred renderer in the XB360 era, e.g. Unreal Engine 3), geometry shaders, multisampled reads (for HDR MSAA and hybrid spatial/temporal AA techniques), and tons of other common techniques.

Asm.js is limited by having no 32-bit float type, no 64-bit int type, no SIMD, no dynamic memory allocation and the fact that they had to extend the language from day 1 just to be able to multiply a 32-bit integer by another quickly.

You may want to actually inform yourself.

> "Unreal Engine 4" is marketing buzzspeak. WebGL is modelled after OpenGL ES 2. Its GLSL support is massively outdated. It lacks features like multiple render targets (used by any deferred renderer in the XB360 era, e.g. Unreal Engine 3), geometry shaders, multisampled reads (for HDR MSAA and hybrid spatial/temporal AA techniques), and tons of other common techniques.

WebGL 2.0 has many of the extensions and is in Editor's Draft status: http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/specs/latest/2.0/ It has a prototype implementation already: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebGL2

> Asm.js is limited by having no 32-bit float type, no 64-bit int type, no SIMD, no dynamic memory allocation and the fact that they had to extend the language from day 1 just to be able to multiply a 32-bit integer by another quickly.

asm.js has 32-bit floats already: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/12/gap-between-asm-js-and-nat...

64-bit ints and SIMD are being discussed on TC39 right now. Dynamic memory allocation (assuming you mean growing the typed array) isn't that important and we have ways to do it if we need to.

> You may want to actually inform yourself.

This kind of comment is emblematic of HN's evaporative cooling, especially when it's inaccurate. :(

There are numerous security issues with WebGL, so I wouldn't really call it "secure".

A decade-late attempt to catch up with the JVM. Notice how there's no design here? It's because the web people had no idea this would be necessary and it got bolted on as a reaction to competitors. That is to say, the innovation belongs to plugin vendors, not the web people.

I would have been perfectly happy to be working with the JVM here, except that the JVM as a platform for web-type client stuff died because the user experience was implemented so shoddily.

There was no conspiracy against it. It had its chance. It used to have high install rates. It was placed about as perfectly for success as you could hope to be. If it hadn't failed so miserably at what it set out to do and be (and instead succeeded in a different area), we would be using it now, and living in the utopia you wish for.

As an aside, a lot of your complaints against web technologies make it sound as if there is a cohesive group of people designing something and doing it wrong. Actually it's a much more chaotic process involving a diverse group of people and companies and competing interests. It doesn't guarantee that we end up with the best designs, but such a process has benefits too, and since it's happening in the open, you could actually take part too (assuming you aren't already).

>It doesn't guarantee that we end up with the best designs, but such a process has benefits too, and since it's happening in the open, you could actually take part too (assuming you aren't already).

Unfortunately, what is needed is LESS people participating.

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