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Google Is Grooming Chrome As a Game Platform
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Conceivably Tech: "On Friday I noticed that Google is heavily pushing New Game, a game developer conference that is focused on HTML5-based gaming content — and, of course, content that runs in web browsers. The fact that such an event already exists and that there is game content being developed in HTML5, is quite stunning by itself. However, Google also noted that a sandboxed native client (NaCl) with 3D (in addition to 2D) will be available in Chrome soon, which will allow the browser to connect to traditional C and C++ code via its integrated Pepper API."
I know Commander Taco used to like games, and now he's not alive to see this. Very sad.
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
The browsers will start crashing in spectacular ways again :(
Google wants to introduce x86 native code to the web at the time when ARM platforms are attracting all the buzz. This is a step backwards, akin to Flash or ActiveX.
So is Chrome Google's current attempt to finally cut Java out of their web application strategy?
Does anyone else see this as a giant security hole? As in, various schemes like this have been tried since the days of ActiveX, and the only reason ActiveX has the worst reputation is because it's the only one that gained widespread use?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How is using Pepper different than ActiveX with Internet Explorer?
If you use pure html 5 with WebGL or Canvas 3D (for IE 9 or IE 10) you can create 3D games using the hosts GPU. Chrome's 3D and hardware acceleration for html 5 does lag considerable behind Firefox and IE 9/10. I wonder if it is because they want you to use Pepper instead?
Either way their actions go agaisn't the spirit of HTML 5. You can do all of that properly in the latest versions of the browsers that is cross platform.
http://saveie6.com/
.. all connected to the Great and Wonderful Google... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I would love to hear the howling if it was microsoft introducing this sandboxed native client.
In other words, a saltbox.
Anybody want a peanut?
Each generation of programmers lasts about 10 years. During these 10 years, which are delimited by the periodic boom-and-bust cycle of the economy, the first 6 years will be spent making horrible mistakes. The next 2 years will be discovering (as we'll see, often actually rediscovering) the proper way, and the last 2 years will be trying frantically to implement the proper approaches and techniques. But after 10 years, the developers who have learned the correct way to do things will have retired, switched to a completely different industry, or moved high up enough in the management chain to a position where they have no direct influence over the technology development.
JavaScript and ActiveX were among the crowning mistakes of the last generation of developers (the "Web 1.0 generation").
Of the so-called "Web 2.0 generation", we're currently at the late stages of the initial 6-year phase. The worst mistakes are being made at this point, and their severity will soon be felt. The lessons will probably be relearned by 2014, and undoing this technology will probably be in effect by 2016. That'll be just in time for another batch of young developers to start the process all over again, recreating these very same problems.
reminds me of Shockwave, but with sandboxing?
Actually this is kind of exciting for if it seriously takes off, that means one can do some gaming in a linux platform. Especially if it's a pay to play thingy which I would imagine that is where they are going with a browser based game. Or free to play but be plagued with ads, or its a pay to win situation. That means the whiny Mac people could play as well. Face it, games is what is keeping Windows around. At least in my opinion.
Take the Red Pill.
And legacy applications, and Excel macros.
It must be the right way, because all the old programmers who don't want to learn anything new hate it.
system("format c");
That was all.
For what else would you like a native client in a consumer product.
Some Googlers seem to appreciate wordplay :)
They're [sandboxes] a theoretical concept that have never worked well in the real world. They've been tried time and time and time and time again. They aren't a new concept, but nobody ever seems able to implement them properly, even when some of the biggest names in the field are involved, and even when they have nearly unlimited resources and people to throw at the problem.
Well, except Apple with iOS, Google with Android, the NSA with their SELinux improvements, a crap-ton of people who worked on and use TrustedBSD, Bitfrost in the OLPC, and every security researcher for the last 20 years who has relied heavily on VMs. But yeah aside from those and probably a bunch more I don't know about, no one has successfully implemented sandboxes.
Maybe what you meant to say was that Microsoft hasn't been able to implement them properly.
Once Google gets this out - knowing competitors will not pick it up - and leverage it's massive weight by paying devs and advertising everywhere - we may actually get some decent games done for it.
But only Chrome will play them, the open standard is just a trick there, as, once again, no one else will implement it for a long while.
Once Chrome has captured market, Google has end-to-end web control, and that is a little bit scary.
What is the benefit other than porting native apps to run in a browser? The article linked to says that the Pepper interface is a binding layer that converts the native calls into stuff that can be done in HTML5. That's great but ... native apps will now be limited to the performance of the HTML5 engine unless I'm missing something. So yeah you can get platform independence as long as you are willing to have an interpreted layer between your code and the OS. Isn't that the same thing Java gives you? How about Windows game developers Direct X support etc? Are developers really going to just throw that away and redesign things to perform well on an interpreted HTML5 interface rather than port the program over to a web language entirely?
And SQL Server, and Visual Studio, and a bzillion different vertical apps put out by ISVs.
You hinted at that with "legacy applications" but the fact is that very little of the installed base of Windows applications counts as "legacy." Most are being actively developed.
Bocoup has a good blog on HTML 5 game development for chrome, by the way.
Who cares if they're making HTML 5 games when they're doing browser detection that blocks other HTML5 capable browsers instead of doing feature detection to tell if the browser supports all the features needed to run?
1) Oracle and Google's Native Client technology are stronger than Minecraft and will kill Java easily.
2) Fewer Software Developers will beat up their children when they come home from work.
3) Value of being alive will be improved.
This could be very good for gaming in linux if it develops well and starts to get better and better 3d capabilities, of course there might be a security issue.
They should start to re-enable it. I use XP on a netbook which has a ION, it's a very powerful GPU for a netbook, I can play movie on 1080p because it uses the GPU to render it. Flash video *were* also accelerated, but not now. Google decided that on XP, they disable all GPU acceleration. So now all the video (like youtube), all flash games, etc, are driven by the poor Atom...
Why they forced a disable is beyond me, there is no way to re-enable it except by going back to Chrome 7 or something like that.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking