But yes, the games industry has been almost entirely HLSL since forever, and this is going to help remove the final obstacles.
Though I would still like to see if slang can succeed and I am always a bit afraid of Microsoft just dropping the ball somewhere.
The old WebGPU meeting notes have some choice quotes from (IIRC) Unity and Adobe engineers literally begging the committee not to invent a new shader language.
This was an interesting tidbit, so I tried to find the source for it. While I did not find it, I did find the December 2019 minutes[0] which has a related point:
>Apple is not comfortable working under Khronos IP framework, because of dispute between Apple Legal & Khronos which is private. Can’t talk about the substance of this dispute. Can’t make any statement for Apple to agree to Khronos IP framework. So we’re discussing, what if we don’t fork? We can’t say whether we’re (Apple) happy with that.
I found this link via rust hn[1] which I found after reading this blog post:[2]
>Vulkan used a bytecode, called SPIR-V, so you could target it from any shader language you wanted. WebGPU was going to use SPIR-V, but then Apple said no
The lobsters thread also links to a relevant HN post:[3]
>I know, I was there. I also think that objection to SPIR-V wasn't completely unfounded. SPIR-V is a nice binary representation of shaders, but it has problems in the context of WebGPU adoption: It's so low level [...] It has a lot of instructions [...] Friction in the features we need, vs features Khronos needs. [...] there is no single well specified and tested textual shading language. HLSL doesn't have a spec.
The linked blog post from lobsters was also discussed on HN, which you also commented in.[4]
It would be great if you could find that Unity/Adobe discussion as I would be interested to read it.
[0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F6ns6I3zs-2JL_dT9hOkX_25...
[1] https://lobste.rs/s/q4ment/i_want_talk_about_webgpu
[2] https://cohost.org/mcc/post/1406157-i-want-to-talk-about-web...
https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Minutes-2019-09-24
Corentin: Web Shading Language — A high-level shading language made by Apple for WebGPU.
<room in general grimaces>
[...]
Jesse B (Unity): We care about HLSL
Eric B (Adobe): Creating a new high level language is a cardinal sin. Don’t. Do. That. Don’t want to rewrite all my shaders AGAIN.
Jesse B: If we can transcode to HLSL to whatever you need, great. If we can’t, we may not support your platform at all.
Eric B: Would really not like even to write another transcoder. If there’s an existing tool to get to an intermediate representation, that’s good. Would suggest SPIRV is an EXCELLENT existing intermediate representation.
Note the WSL language made by Apple which sparked that discussion is unrelated to the WGSL language they ended up shipping, but the sentiment that the ISV representatives just wanted them to use HLSL or SPIR-V stands.
Ah, that explains part of why I couldn't find it. I was searching mainly for WGSL. Something Like 'WEBGPU minutes "Unity" "HLSL" "WGSL"'. There was also WHLSL also from Apple at one point but was later droppped in favor of WSL.[0][1]
>A few months ago we discussed a proposal for a new shading language called Web High-Level Shading Language, and began implementation as a proof of concept. Since then, we’ve shifted our approach to this new language, which I will discuss a little later in this post.
>[...]
>Because of community feedback, our approach toward designing the language has evolved. Previously, we designed the language to be source-compatible with HLSL, but we realized this compatibility was not what the community was asking for. Many wanted the shading language to be as simple and as low-level as possible. That would make it an easier compile target for whichever language their development shop uses.
>[...]
>So, we decided to make the language more simple, low-level, and fast to compile, and renamed the language to Web Shading Language to match this pursuit.2
The "we designed the language to be source-compatible with HLSL, but we realized this compatibility was not what the community was asking for" comment is funny because Unity's "We care about HLSL" comment seems to be directly against this.
In any case, this is really a disappointing move from Apple. Just another example of them ignoring developers – even large developers like Adobe and Unity – over completely petty disputes and severe NIH.
The craziest line in the post is probably "[WSL] would make it an easier compile target for whichever language their development shop uses." It's like they knew people wanted SPIR-V but they wouldn't do it due to some petty legal drama that Apple invented and then chose literally the worst of all worlds by making yet another compile target instead of at least choosing the next best thing which would be something that is compatible with HLSL.
To appease Google most likely. WebGPU is based on original work by Apple and Mozilla which based it on Metal.
I doubt Apple would be against whatever Metal uses for its shader language.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F6ns6I3zs-2JL_dT9hOkX_25...
Apple is not comfortable working under Khronos IP framework, because of dispute between Apple Legal & Khronos which is private. Can’t talk about the substance of this dispute. Can’t make any statement for Apple to agree to Khronos IP framework. So we’re discussing, what if we don’t fork? We can’t say whether we’re (Apple) happy with that.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F6ns6I3zs-2JL_dT9hOkX_25...
> MS: Apple is not comfortable working under Khronos IP framework, because of dispute between Apple Legal & Khronos which is private. Can’t talk about the substance of this dispute. Can’t make any statement for Apple to agree to Khronos IP framework. So we’re discussing, what if we don’t fork? We can’t say whether we’re (Apple) happy with that.
Reading between the lines, it seems like Apple mainly doesn't want to implement SPIR-V because engaging with the "Khronos IP framework" would prevent them from suing other Khronos members over patent disputes.
No one asked for a new Rust like shading language that they have to rewrite their shaders on.
Also contrary to FOSS circles, most studios don't really care about Web 3D, hence why streaming is such a thing for them.
There have been HLSL to SPIR-V compilers for several years now, this is Microsoft own official compiler getting SPIR-V backend as well.
WebGL still has fundamental issues of not even supporting anything resembling a modern OpenGL feature set (with modern meaning 2010s era stuff like compute shaders and multi draw indirect) in theory, and in practice, macOS doesn't support WebGL2, meaning stuff like multiple render targets (which is necessary for deferred rendering), so it's almost impossible to make a modernish game that runs in a browser well.
Imo the problem isn't that WebGPU/Wasm is a decade/X years behind, but that we cannot reliably expect a feature set that existed on typical mid 2000s PCs to reliably work in the browser across all platforms (which is the whole point of the web).
WebGL2 is fully supported in Safari since quite a while now. In fact it's using the same rendering backend as Chrome and Firefox (ANGLE), and AFAIK Google and Apple engineers worked together to create (or at least improve?) the ANGLE Metal backend and integrate ANGLE into Safari.
(I agree with your general point though.)
Converting your SPIR-V to WGSL just to convert it back to SPIR-V to feed it into a Vulkan driver, or running an entire language frontend just to emit DXIL or Metal IR. We learned 15 years ago that textual shader languages at the GPU API interface are a mistake but we're forced to relearn the same mistakes because Apple wouldn't play ball. What a joke.
Unfortunately, HLSL isn’t an open standard like GLSL. Is it Khronos's intention to focus solely on SPIR-V moving forward, leaving the choice of higher-level shader languages up to application developers?
It is up to the community to come up with alternative, and the game development community is mostly HLSL.
https://themaister.net/blog/2021/09/05/my-personal-hell-of-t...
https://themaister.net/blog/2021/10/03/my-personal-hell-of-t...
https://themaister.net/blog/2021/11/07/my-personal-hell-of-t...
https://themaister.net/blog/2022/04/11/my-personal-hell-of-t...
https://themaister.net/blog/2022/04/24/my-personal-hell-of-t...
That's a problem that goes away irrespective of any DX extensions to SPIR-V for supporting the binding model DX uses.
HLSL has evolved to be C++ like, including lightweight templates, mesh shaders and work graphs, has module support via libraries, is continuously being improved on each DirectX release.
We already see this with rendering engines that are using CUDA instead, or as shown at Vulkanised sessions.
I do agree that to the extent C++ has grown, and the security issues, something else would be preferable, maybe NVidia has some luck with their Slang adoption proposal.
Modern GPU stuff is getting too complex to be practical without higher language features.
Khronos already mentioned in a couple of conferences that there will be no further work improving GLSL, and given DirectX weight in the industry, HLSL kind of took over.
Additionally for the NVidia fans, it might be that Slang also gets a place in the Vulkan ecosystem, discussions are ongoing, as revealed on SIGGRAPH sessions.