Thanks for the response, I couldn't find that issue previously and I'm now following it.
>From my point of view some other fallback is definitely necessary. I understand that a GPU crash may cause temporary interruption for someone's browsing experience, but content made by tools like Construct suddenly stopping working for potentially tens of millions of people seems like a far worse outcome than that. So I struggle to see how removing a fallback will do anything to improve the user experience, and could prove to be a disaster for commercial products like ours. I hope some other solution can be found. On Wed, 27 Nov 2024 at 19:12, Geoff Lang <geoffl...@google.com> wrote: > Hey Ashley, > > I suspect the M133 in the chrome status page will be updated to a later > release. I also put the bug link (https://issues.chromium.org/40277080) > on that page. > > Thanks for the feedback. Right now we're in a situation where we > definitely need to remove SwiftShader WebGL support but we're evaluating > other ways to support fallback based on this kind of thread. WARP is a > possibility but still suffers from continuing to run JITed code in > processes that are high security risk and difficult to sandbox. > > The "users have a poor experience" situation is more than just content > running slowly. A common case where users result in software fallback is > due to GPU driver crashes and hangs, to the user this is a series of > flickers and hangs in the page followed by it running slowly because the > whole browser switched to software rendering. > > We'll likely update the feature page again once David is back from holiday. > > Geoff > > > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 10:28 AM François Beaufort <fbeauf...@google.com> > wrote: > >> According to https://issues.chromium.org/40277080, I believe >> geoffl...@chromium.org should be able to help you. >> >> On Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 4:22 PM 'Ashley Gullen' via blink-dev < >> blink-dev@chromium.org> wrote: >> >>> Hi folks, it's been a week, is anyone from the relevant team able to >>> review this and respond? >>> >>> Best regards >>> >>> Ashley >>> >>> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 at 16:54, Ashley Gullen <ash...@scirra.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Blink developers, >>>> >>>> I am concerned about this entry on Chrome Platform Status "Remove >>>> SwiftShader fallback", currently scheduled to ship in M133: >>>> https://chromestatus.com/feature/5166674414927872 >>>> >>>> There does not appear to be an associated bug, nor have I seen any >>>> intent to deprecate associated with this on blink-dev. It appears to be an >>>> unannounced unilateral decision by Google which I'm worried has the >>>> potential to have a big impact on products and web content relying on >>>> WebGL, like our commercial browser-based game engine Construct ( >>>> www.construct.net). >>>> >>>> For many years now web developers have been able to assume that WebGL >>>> support is ubiquitous. Numbers are hard to come by, but the best available >>>> are probably from Web3DSurvey (https://web3dsurvey.com/): WebGL 1 is >>>> supported on ~99.7% of devices, but ~2.7% of uses report "major performance >>>> caveat", which seems likely to indicate SwiftShader. At web scale, this is >>>> tens of millions of users. Worse, this survey may in fact be biased towards >>>> high-end users with more modern systems that are more likely to have >>>> hardware/driver support for WebGL - the real number could be larger. WebGPU >>>> still has much lower support numbers so that does not look like a >>>> workaround. Canvas2D is not a viable workaround for modern content, and the >>>> ubiquity of WebGL has meant even tools like Construct that used to support >>>> a Canvas2D fallback ultimately removed it and went all-in on WebGL. >>>> >>>> I suspect for years we have been able to assume that WebGL support is >>>> ubiquitous in large part due to the Swiftshader fallback covering the last >>>> few percent of users who don't have suitable hardware/drivers. Content that >>>> works slowly is better than content that does not work at all, and I fear >>>> that removal of this fallback will result in companies like us, as well as >>>> other major users of WebGL (three.js, itch.io, etc.) being inundated >>>> with "your content stopped working!" complaints. I also find it hard to >>>> understand that "users have a poor experience" with the CPU fallback being >>>> given as a justification for this, as content that does not work at all is >>>> a far worse experience than having it run but slowly, and is far more >>>> likely to result in customers contacting support. >>>> >>>> This could end up being a disaster for us. It would help ease my mind >>>> if Google could: >>>> >>>> - Provide data about the Internet-scale usage of software fallback >>>> for WebGL demonstrating that removal will have minimal impact >>>> - Use some other software fallback like WARP on Windows: >>>> >>>> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3darticles/directx-warp >>>> - Provide software fallback for WebGPU so there is a possible >>>> workaround with the newer API >>>> - At least delay this decision until there has been time to discuss >>>> with WebGL developers and determine the impact, identify workarounds, >>>> implement them and roll out the changes >>>> >>>> It would also be useful if Google could explain the precise timeline >>>> for this - it's not clear whether M133 is the beginning of a deprecation >>>> period, or the point of removal. >>>> >>>> Best regards >>>> >>>> Ashley Gullen >>>> Scirra Ltd >>>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "blink-dev" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to blink-dev+unsubscr...@chromium.org. >>> To view this discussion visit >>> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAABs73gJTc1ur8v-aVR3rTsOa%3DeTmDHWEpNuPAyWHQkbUPFt5w%40mail.gmail.com >>> <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAABs73gJTc1ur8v-aVR3rTsOa%3DeTmDHWEpNuPAyWHQkbUPFt5w%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blink-dev+unsubscr...@chromium.org. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAABs73jqsX9i9OJBc-OybSFcqCpOzDOxdyw%2BsGCeaR5NOahmhw%40mail.gmail.com.
