Re: [Public WebGL] WebVulkan

[Florian Bösch <pyalot@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 5:45 PM, Brandon Jones <bajones@google.com> wrote:

As such it starts to feel like a new API designed specifically for the web with the purpose of wrapping the modern APIs is the only logical conclusion. You'd lose some of the convenience we've had with WebGL where a lot of existing OpenGL/ES resources were usable with minor tweaks, but at least it would allow the web as a platform to keep pace without sitting around waiting for a "winner" to emerge.

I don't think we should casually be discarding a model that's worked incredibly well (WebGL). And I'm going to assume everybody is pretty clear on the historical precedents set by web people on that front (and abysmal failures), and the policitcal impossibility of targeting a vendors API.

I do not believe the web as a multi vendor M:N market is basically capable of coming up with a solution to hardware acceleration that can be adopted as successfully as WebGL, if we abandon the only standard there is to do it.

But let's entertain that thought, of building something that's like Vulkan, but for the web.

1. Come up with some way for an intermediate binary format to deliver GPU code... like say Spir-V perhaps?
2. Come up with some API semantic suitable for what we want, like say, a subset of Vulkan?

Congratulations, you just implemented WebVulkan (the light version)...

You can't ignore vulkan. You can't ignore the only standard that exists, as a model, to model your API, because, in the end, you're just modeling after Vulkan. The only thing you accomplish is making an API, that's like vulkan, but isn't vulkan, because... reasons.