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Epic Games & Mozilla Give Sneak Peak At Unreal Engine 4 In The Browser

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Mozilla have been busy haven't they, they are now working with Unity3D on an WebGL exporter while they have also been working with Epic Games to port Unreal Engine 4 to the web!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c2uNDlP4RiE

They say a year ago it was only running at 44% of native speeds, now they are claiming it's up to 67% of native speeds, that's pretty good going. In another year that could be right up close to native speeds.

This is all done using "asm.js", a supercharged subset of JavaScript pioneered by Mozilla. So, kudos to Mozilla for pushing it forward.

See Mozilla's full blog post here.

What do you guys think to browser-based gaming? I can't see it being the future myself especially with a behemoth like Steam around, and now with them pushing SteamOS and Steam Machines too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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9 comments

Xpander Mar 18, 2014
i dont like my games inside the browsers... i just want to browse web in it.
since i have a habbit of having 50+ tabs open all the time, it would be kind a hardcore with games runnin on some of them.
also browser based games seem to be less open to mods and stuff.
manny Mar 18, 2014
if they make games "feel native" (hide most of the browser stuff) and have a desktop launcher, then I don't care much if its "web based".

I think the lines will blur in the near future.

Indeed I highly prefer devs to target web, html5, webGL, etc. than to target only windows and then they want to sell us crappy Wine ports...
Joe Mar 18, 2014
Essentially the whole point here is to remove the downloading of game files and to replace it with on-demand streaming to the browser.

This makes it a nice solution for those who don't mind only licensing their access to a game instead of owning it. People who instead want to own their games outright (i.e. getting a DRM-free installation file to download that will install and run without online verification) will probably see this as a bad development since it makes it so easy for studios to go for the license approach.

Let's hope there will continue to be studios that value players who want to buy their games to own.
Mambo Mar 18, 2014
If UE4 relies on shared memory parallelism that part will be very hard to port, maybe with a compiler hacker reimplementing memory barriers as IPC between webworkers.
berarma Mar 19, 2014
Not all games need cutting-edge technology, see most Android games and several PC games. The good thing is being able to run them on any OS and device where Firefox runs.

Games/apps running in a browser doesn't mean you have to download them every time you run them, they can be packaged for a one-time download like any other game. The preconceived idea that anything running in a browser must be downloaded at the moment and that it has to work online is wrong. At the same time, thinking that anything not running in a browser will work offline and that it won't depend on downloads is also wrong (Steam comes to mind).

I see the good, but like anything else it could be used in ways that we don't like.
philip550c Mar 19, 2014
No interest really. Glad it's doing well but I don't play games in the browser.
Sabun Mar 19, 2014
Quotesince I have a habit of having 50+ tabs open all the time, it would be kind a hardcore with games running on some of them.

+1 ! Here I was thinking I was being weird having so many tabs open! Glad to know I'm not the only one ;)
Best yet Mar 19, 2014
they're release the source code to UR4 so Linux ports will be Native :)

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/19/unreal-engine-4-new-payment-model
Anonymous Mar 19, 2014
I was reading about how Ubuntu for mobile allows you to install HTML 5 apps on to the device and how they were "equal right citizens" in the app environment, or something like that.

The main issue people have with browser based games is that you need to download them each time & you need a constant connection. With the ability to install web apps, like described in Ubuntu for phone, you would solve two of the major issues with web based games.
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