Unity Benchmarks Browser WebGL Performance (unity3d.com) 38
An anonymous reader writes: Jonas Echterhoff from Unity has posted the latest Unity WebGL benchmark results on the Unity blog. He writes, "A bit over a year ago, we released a blog post with performance benchmarks for Unity WebGL, to compare WebGL performance in different browsers. We figured it was time to revisit those benchmarks to see how the numbers have changed. Microsoft has since released Windows 10 with their new Edge browser (which supports asm.js and is now enabling it by default) – so we were interested to see how that competes. Also, we have an experimental build of Unity using Shared Array Buffers to run multithreaded code, and we wanted to see what kind of performance gains to expect. So we tested this in a nightly build of Firefox with Shared Array Buffer support." The benchmark concludes that Firefox 42 64-bit is the fastest, Edge takes second, and Chrome and Safari share third place.
Edge is IE (Score:2, Funny)
New name same buggy pony show. Nothing can beat Chrome
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing can beat Chrome
Except for Firefox and Edge. At least Chrome ties with Safari. Third is better than fourth!
Need to buy a Mac and a copy of OS X (Score:1)
Is it possible to test on Safari without buying a $499 Safari license [apple.com]? And if you're testing on Safari, is it also possible to test on Edge without paying another $199.99 for an Edge license [microsoftstore.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't want to buy them, don't buy them. If you want a cross platform browser that runs WebGL fast, then use Firefox.
That's fine on the user end, so long as you have administrator access to install Firefox. But if you are developing a site that relies on WebGL, how can you encourage your users to use Firefox? Or should you accept the browser that the user is already using? If so, then you have to test in every browser, and that includes buying a Mac on which to test in Safari.
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What you say is technically correct, in the sense of "You don't have to make a web site" or "You don't have to make your site compatible with Safari." It's just that the operator of a public web site is highly unlikely to rationally want to either stop making a web site or turn away users of OS X's pack-in browser or iOS's only browser engine that isn't run remotely. When you do intentionally give up on Safari users, you get vocal critics like this [slashdot.org].
Re:Edge is IE (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the benchmarks speak a very different story. While IE is slow beyond use, Edge with asm.js actual performs pretty well, much better then Chrome.
In general, I am very happy with the direction MS is taking with Edge, and have so far found it not to be "the new IE" at all, quite to the contrary. Following open web standards, maintaining public page to track new developments (https://status.modern.ie), great performance - all of this sounds very promising to me.
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Free video in Edge will be silent (Score:2)
Following open web standards
Which will reportedly [windows.com] soon include compatibility with royalty-free web codecs such as the WebM project's VP9 [windows.com]. Yet video in royalty-free formats on Edge will be silent, as the same page states that support for royalty-free audio codecs Vorbis and Opus, used with WebM video, is still "under consideration". And does the only operating system for which Edge is available respect the privacy of web users, or does it by default report every visited URL to Microsoft?
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That being the case, why would you expect Microsoft to respect your privacy more than you do?
Your reply exhibits the tu quoque fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The e-mail provider used for the account "tepples" on the website lashdot.org does not affect whether the Windows operating system makes it time-consuming to opt out of telemetry, or even impossible in the case of home editions.
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Let me try to rephrase.
Just because one web browser is the best at a single web platform feature, such as WebGL, does not make it the all-around best web browser. The best web browser is a combination of several factors:
Edge falls over in at least two of th
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Except Chrome was not number one in any benchmark. In fact, it was between IE 11 and FireFox 46 in every single benchmark.
Reading, it's neato!
Firefix has been best at this for a while (Score:2, Insightful)
Back when Epic first ported Unreal Engine to run in a browser, the only browser it really worked well in was Firefox. Now, Firefox is still the best performer for these kinds of tasks.
Now, commence with the replies explaining why Firefox is a memory hog and not worth using, but it's some kinda weird memory hog that for the past 3-4 years actually uses less memory than Chrome or any other browser.
Memory fragmentation in a single process (Score:2)
I think the conventional wisdom is that Firefox is a memory hog because after you open a bunch of heavy DHTML documents in tabs and then close them, the memory of the single Firefox process becomes fragmented until you close the last tab. Even a "Minimize memory usage" in about:memory may leave the process a hundred megabytes or more larger than that of a fresh launch. Until Electrolysis becomes the default, the only thing commonly run in a separate process is Flash Player, and that's been on its way out fo
Comparison (Score:2)
According to the first charts Unity + Chrome 46 runs faster on a 2.6 GHz i7 + GT 750M MacBook Pro than a 3.3.GHz i7 + GTX 960 Windows desktop. Huh?
Do these numbers prove certain browsers are faster, or that Unity is unevenly optimized?
(Note: Firefox 41 is also faster on the MBP, though that can be attributed to Firefox for Windows being only 32-bit)
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I'd be curious to see the benchmark run on Windows 10 using the built-in Intel video chipset instead of the Nvidia and see if Chrome runs faster.
Also, keep in mind Firefox and Unity have collaborated in the past to optimize the engine in the browser.
https://blog.mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org]
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Firefox for Windows being only 32-bit
They were also running 64-bit Firefox on Windows (see the first chart). It wasn't released in time for their benchmark, but Firefox 43 [mozilla.org] is out and has 64-bit builds available for Windows [pcworld.com].
Label your axes! (Score:1, Insightful)
Why is it so hard for people to label their f***ing axes!
https://xkcd.com/833/
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Well, benchmark results don't really have any units but are arbitrary numbers.
Though, yes, it would have been better to label it with something like "results, higher is better", as that is not clear from the graphs.
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Yes, this is mostly memory related. Browsers have a tendency to either crash when parsing all the code, or to run out of memory when trying to allocate the memory for the game itself (which emscripten implements using a single big array of bytes in JavaScript). See http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual... [unity3d.com]
Graphics My Ass can't run WebGL (Score:2)
I've found it a little flaky for actual production use so far.
That and laptops with Intel GMA that are stuck on OpenGL 1.4. WebGL requires at least OpenGL 2.0, which wasn't supported in Intel IGPs until HD Graphics. This means Westmere (2010) at bare minimum in desktops and full-size laptops, Sandy Bridge (2011) for any sort of performance, or Bay Trail (Q3 2013) for small or convertible laptops.