[x3d-public] GPU APIs and X3D

[John Carlson]

Andreas, I didn’t read the whole article, but my first non-performant
thought is to provide an ANGLE-like WebGL3 polyfill on top of WebGPU that
makes initial porting easier.   I realize there are new things in WebGPU we
want to leverage that might be added to WebGL3.

Not exciting, I realize.

John

On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 10:35 PM Andreas Plesch <andreasplesch at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Although X3D is a high level scene graph, it is influenced by OpenGL
> and many, perhaps all X3D browsers use OpenGL or the similar WebGL as
> an API to draw pixels.
>
> OpenGL is not updated anymore and other APIs are now dominant: Metal,
> Vulcan, Direct3D12 and now WebGPU. It is already available in most web
> browsers as an alternative to WebGL2. WebGPU is cross-platform, close
> to GPU instructions and can be very performant.
>
> Did anybody think about or actually try to use something other than
> OpenGL for X3D rendering ?
>
> It is time to start speculating and mind mapping how one would go
> about designing a new X3D browser which uses another low-level API.
> Ideally, X3D is abstract enough that the choice of graphics API does
> not matter much. But there are certainly many aspects that an
> implementation has to consider which depend on the low-level API, from
> the design stage to actual coding.
>
> https://webgpufundamentals.org/webgpu/lessons/webgpu-from-webgl.html
> has a detailed comparison between WebGL and WebGPU.
>
> WebGPU is lower level. One example mentioned above is ImageTexture.
> With WebGL it is possible to just change the source image for the
> texture, and everything else in the rendering process can stay the
> same. With WebGPU it is necessary to destroy the old texture, and
> rebuild a pipeline in case the ImageTexture is changed.
>
> A Shape corresponds to a draw call in WebGL. For WebGPU a Shape
> presumably still could correspond to a draw call but it is also
> possible to bundle all draw calls for a Scene and submit those in one
> call. That seems interesting but it is unclear how event flow may
> affect this option.
>
> Any experience with nonGL APIs may be insightful.
>
> Andreas
>
> --
> Andreas Plesch
> Waltham, MA 02453
>
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