[HN Gopher] Construct's New WebGPU Renderer
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       Construct's New WebGPU Renderer
        
       Author : AshleysBrain
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2023-06-28 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.construct.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.construct.net)
        
       | kllrnohj wrote:
       | I didn't know what Construct was so I went to the homepage for
       | clues. That intro spinning cube demo runs at a solid 4 fps with
       | graphical glitches on a not exactly slow phone (Pixel 7), give or
       | take, and is a quite terrible introduction for a "Cutting-edge
       | technology that runs right inside your browser like magic."
       | 
       | Then again the entire section on "game engine performance
       | _matters_ " only compares the performance of "JavaScript" (V8?
       | Safari? Who knows!) vs. Game Maker Language and doesn't at any
       | point compare anything about the performance of the actual game
       | engine.
       | 
       | But it is cool that they're switching to WebGPU. Should make
       | native app ports more viable to drastically improve performance
       | and resource utilization
        
         | syntheweave wrote:
         | The intro runs fine on my nondescript phone of a few years ago.
         | I would guess it's a browser issue.
        
         | shlubbert wrote:
         | FWIW that intro cube is not implemented with their engine. It's
         | just 4 video embeds animated with plain CSS 3D transforms, so
         | performance should depend entirely on browser optimization on
         | your device.
        
       | vardump wrote:
       | Reads pretty much like an advertisement.
       | 
       | Nothing that interesting; 2D game engine Construct moved to
       | WebGPU, and reaps some obvious performance benefits. Great.
        
         | waselighis wrote:
         | It's an announcement for a major update with relevant
         | benchmarks and some basic technical details. What more do you
         | want?
         | 
         | You might find this older post more interesting, more
         | technical. Just keep in mind this blog post is 3 years old:
         | 
         | https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/webgl-webg...
        
           | vardump wrote:
           | 2D blitting is just not that exciting, no matter how it's
           | done.
           | 
           | It's trivial.
        
             | ac50hz wrote:
             | The large, distracting menus are quite exciting.
        
             | carbotaniuman wrote:
             | It seemed exciting to me! Maybe gatekeeping technical
             | knowledge is not something we want to do...
        
             | esrauch wrote:
             | I think 2d blitting is plenty exciting and this article
             | looks like a great fit for content on hackernews.
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Obvious only if you already know what WebGPU is and how it
         | compares to WebGL.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | goddtriffin wrote:
       | I've happy about the recent stabilization of WebGPU in Chrome,
       | and excited for the rest of the browsers to follow suit.
       | 
       | I wanted to start experimenting with it, and attempted to do so
       | with Deno (which is what I've been developing in the past few
       | projects), and I'm sad to find out that they recently removed
       | WebGPU from its interface due to slower start up times and larger
       | binary sizes [0][1] :/ I hope they re-enable it soon so that I
       | don't have to mess around with tsc and webpack again...
       | 
       | [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76561043/deno-bundle-
       | pro... [1] https://github.com/denoland/deno/pull/18094
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | No video?
        
         | waselighis wrote:
         | They provided links to the benchmarks so you can try running
         | them yourself. I feel like a prerecorded video would add little
         | value to this announcement.
         | 
         | https://downloads.scirra.com/labs/perf/opacitythrash-webgl/
         | 
         | https://downloads.scirra.com/labs/perf/opacitythrash-webgpu/
         | 
         | https://downloads.scirra.com/labs/perf/colorthrash-webgl/
         | 
         | https://downloads.scirra.com/labs/perf/colorthrash-webgpu/
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-28 23:00 UTC)