Mozilla and Epic bring Unreal Engine 3 to the browser
Mozilla shooting for parity between native and web performance for AAA games
Mozilla is working with Epic Games to port the Unreal Engine 3 for the web.
In an announcement at GDC, reported by Ars Technica, Mozilla is pushing for 3D graphics performance in the web that rivals native apps, with the ultimate goal of supporting AAA games in the browser.
"To make these advancements, Mozilla developed a highly-optimized version of JavaScript that supercharges a developer's gaming code in the browser to enable visually compelling, fast, 3D gaming experiences on the Web," a statement released by Mozilla read.
"With this technology we are also opening up the path for 3D Web-based games on mobile as JavaScript performance continues to close the gap with native."
One of the problems outlined by Ars Technica is the long load times associated with current WebGL applications, and the huge size of current AAA games - Bioshock Infinite is cited as an example, which is 17GB of game data on a disk.
The Khronos Group, which is responsible for the development of WebGL, is in the early stages of developing common data formats for 3D assets that would allow more intelligent management and streaming of resources for games of this size, significantly reducing load times.
