WebGL Support

[KingVinegar]

Hello,

My company is considering using Nova for future projects but we do a lot of WebGL builds. I saw in the feature list that WebGL isn't supported.

Could you clarify what that means? I'm wondering if not supported means Nova absolutely will not work with WebGl builds, or if it means more along the lines that Nova hasn't been tested for WebGL and it may or may not cause problems.

Thanks!
-Steve

[dkonik]

Unfortunately it's not simply due to a lack of testing. We have tested, and we'd love to be able to support WebGL, but Nova has a dependency on ComputeBuffers, which require shader feature level 4.5 (i.e. OpenGL ES 3.1+). WebGL 2.0, which is the latest version, is based on OpenGL ES 3.0 and does not support ComputeBuffers at this time, which is why Nova doesn't work for WebGL.

[KingVinegar]

Thank you for getting back to me. Apologies if this is a redundant question, but does that mean it won't work with HTML5? We build most of our projects using WebGL HTML5 in Unity, which then get uploaded to Itch.

[dkonik]

No worries, happy to clarify. A Unity WebGL build is an HTML5 canvas element, inside of which your game is rendered using WebGL. So a Unity web build uses both, and there isn't a way (as far as I am aware) to make a build for the web that doesn't use WebGL. So unfortunately the same limitations still apply regarding Nova compatibility.

[ExpLuuk]

@dkonik It seems like Khronos has made an attempt at bringing GPU Compute to WebGL 2.0 through some sort of extension called WebGL 2.0 Compute. (Link here) While this is currently not supported by Unity, would this addition be enough to get Nova running in WebGL?

[dkonik]

Looking through the link you provided, it does seem like the functionality added by WebGL 2.0 Compute would have been sufficient for Nova (specifically, the addition of shader storage buffers). Unfortunately, the WebGL 2.0 Compute specification was made obsolete.

[ExpLuuk]

Dang, sorry that I missed that.

Is there any chance that there'll ever be a compatibility mode for WebGL in Nova UI without an update to WebGL? Or is NovaUI simply too reliant on the compute buffers?

Like @KingVinegar I'm looking to switch over the company's UI framework to NovaUI because of its flexibility, performance and ease of use compared to UnityUI or UI Toolkit, but we sometimes have clients that require a WebGL build. It would be great if we could maintain a single UI framework instead of two.

[dkonik]

No worries at all!

There's certainly a chance we'll eventually add WebGL support in the future. That said, in the spirit of transparency, Nova is very reliant on compute buffers for transferring data from the CPU to the GPU. Changing this would be a rather large undertaking and would be restrictive and/or non-optimal for the rest of the platforms that do support compute buffers, which likely means creating and maintaining an alternate rendering pipeline just for WebGL, like you mentioned.

So it's certainly not impossible, but it is hard to justify prioritizing it over other (currently more requested) features at this time. Should we hear from enough users that a lack of WebGL support is the most common pain point or largest reason they're unable to use Nova in their projects, then it's something we could definitely look into more seriously.

[ExpLuuk]

Thanks for the swift reply and the transparency on the matter!

I'm looking forward to the future of Nova UI. I've been seeing a lot of feature requests being handled on this repo, so I'll definitely keep an eye on it. In the meantime, I'll start converting some of our framework to Nova and see where that takes us next.

[dkonik]

Of course! Thanks for checking out Nova, and please keep the feedback coming! User input really helps us prioritize feature requests :)

[AaronJessen]

+1 for adding WebGL support

I purchased Nova back when I thought I was going to be deploying native VR/AR apps through the app stores. But, I've now decided to only deploy through WebXR (WebGL), and as such I won't be able to use your amazing asset.

[Stovoy]

+1. I would really appreciate WebGL support. I'm using Unity with Nova to port what is currently a web game, and would love to be able to continue hosting a version that is accessible on the web.

It seems as though Unity is actively developing support for WebGPU: https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-about-webgpu.1277615/#post-8720535. That is likely some time away & I'm sure getting Nova to support that would at least be as big an undertaking as maintaining a separate rendering pipeline just for WebGL.

[adgray1]

We just published v1.3.0 with official support for WebGL!

[Stovoy]

Thank you so much for this!

[ExpLuuk]

That's great to hear!

I've been running into more and more problems with uGUI during the last few projects I've completed for various clients. I'll soon resume my experimentation/framework building and probably get a license soon after.

FYI, the “Compatibility” page on the Nova website still reports incompatibility with WebGL.

[adgray1]

Yes, thank you! The compatibility page has now been updated!

[ExpLuuk]

Amazing!

Is there anything you'd like to share about getting Nova working on WebGL? Any oddities we might want to keep in mind or performance impact or stuff like that?

I'm interested in how you guys got Nova compatible with WebGL with the heavy reliance on compute buffers.

Thanks again!