On: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL

[coldcode]

What is the performance like for asm.js and WebGL compared to a native app for PC or Mac? What do you lose?

[azakai → coldcode]

WebGL is basically at native speed. The only issue might be if a GL extension you need is not in WebGL yet, but that is moving along quickly.

asm.js can run close to native speed, depends on the JS engine of course, but it's not far off. See for example

https://github.com/joelgwebber/bench2d

[Joeri → azakai]

To qualify, close to native speed means about two thirds of native speed in a best case scenario. Fine for games that don't stress the hardware to its limits, but not for top tier.

[azakai → Joeri]

First of all performance is CPU+GPU, and the GPU side is basically at native speed. Many games are mostly GPU bound, so for them they would run at full native speed.

For games that are CPU bound, two thirds of speed is the current average on a set of benchmarks on Firefox, yes. But it will vary on codebase, and is constantly improving.

Regardless, you say that top tier games won't work. What is UE4 and the higher-end stuff Unity demoed, if not top tier?

[coldcode → azakai]

Why does asm.js run so crappily on Safari/Mac?

[marcosscriven → coldcode]

Yes I wish that would change too. A port I did of something ran well in Chrome and Firefox, but terribly in Safari

[ahoge → coldcode]

Because it uses JSC instead of V8.