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Why NASA Switched from Unity to Blend4Web

150 points by felhr 11y ago

ndepoel 11y ago
It's very simple: Unity was never designed with a target platform as radical as HTML5/JS/WebGL in mind. It's stuck with an older version of the Mono runtime for its scripting language, and they've pulled off some crazy tricks to get it to work on WebGL: Mono IL code is cross-compiled to C++, which then gets cross-compiled again to JS/WebGL using Emscripten. That it works at all is nothing short of a miracle. However, compatibility and performance will be really hard to get up to a decent standard, especially when compared to engines that were built from the ground up for WebGL, such as Blend4Web. Long story short: if WebGL is your primary target platform, Unity is not exactly the first place you should look.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Quite true. If one main goal is WebGL then the best option is to adopt a WebGL native engine, instead of trying to cram a native experience into the browser.
  - azakai 11y ago
    It depends on the functionality you need. Unity does a lot more than lightweight WebGL engines do. Of course, if a lightweight WebGL engine is enough - and it might well be the case for this NASA app, which doesn't need sophisticated AI, physics, scripting, effects, etc. - then that is the better route. There are also middle grounds between a native WebGL engine and a full native engine like Unity. There are lightweight native engines, like Cube 2, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread and there are even lighter than that. There isn't a dichotomy between native and compiled game engines. In fact, some native WebGL game engines use compiled portions, like PlayCanvas which uses ammo.js, a compiled native physics engine, https://github.com/playcanvas/engine https://github.com/playcanvas/engine
    - peterashford 11y ago
      Someone calling Unity "sophisticated" makes me laugh. It's a poorly implemented bugfest.
- jebblue 11y ago
  I doubt WebGL will be a serious competitor to any platform 3D engine for at least another decade, probably two.
  - lisivka 11y ago
    I exported my home from SweetHome3D into Blender, then into HTML5 using blend4web and it looks surprisingly good both on my fresh $100 smartphone and on my $600 notebook. I just added another source of light to make shadows softer. I reading book about Blender because I want to add walkability to home, but I have no idea how. :-)
    - codewithcheese 11y ago
      Sounds like you really love your home :-)
      - lisivka 11y ago
        I hoped that I will start building of my home in 2014, but revolution and war with Russia delayed it. I bought plan of "Starboard Solar home" built in Boulder, Colorado 30 years ago. It uses Trombe wall to heat and/or cool home. I will also use G.R.E.B. technology to build "Passivhaus". Unfortunately, I spent all my savings at revolution, so now I am waiting until I will have at least $15K in savings to build enclosure, so I am spending my time to make building plan detailed and SweetHome3D is perfect tool for that, except that it is hard to share 3D model with others. Export to HTML5 solved my problem: I can just display home levels on my cheap 5,5" smartphone or share it using Google Drive. IMHO, export of 3D models to HTML5 is superb technology and will be used everywhere. For example, clothes shop can use it to display clothes on model of customer, in dynamic (walking, dancing, running, etc.). Car shop can use it to provide virtual test drive. Constructions shop can use it to let customer practice with tools and materials. Anybody willing to start SaaS startup in that area? I am working for outsource firm, so I cannot start a software startup, because I will be fired immediately and I have not enough savings, but I can be hired. I have more than 25 years of experience in programming and more than 30 of successfully finished projects (and 2 failed), I participated in few startups (e.g. Bazarvoice), I saw my code spread, e.g. in BashFAQ, etc.
mschuster91 11y ago
Hmm, about networking, could not WebSockets be used for client-server comms?
- simonz05 11y ago
  WebSockets work for Unity WebGL. Not sure if there is an official implementation, but we use it in a multi-player game. We specifically run Photon Game Server with WebGL and WebSockets.
deproders 11y ago
What about Unreal 4? I read that they support HTML5 pretty decently by using Emscripten. I really do not know what is their current status on that subject.
- danpeddle 11y ago
  It really would be interesting to know if anyone took it beyond the (amazing) demo phase.
- daredevildave 11y ago
  It's a push to call the Unreal 4 support decent. Unity at least have it as part of their product feature set. Unreal seem to do it only as a demonstration piece. The problem with taking a engine like Unity or Unreal and compiling to javascript is that 1) they end up with very large blobs of javascript (Unity is around 5MB of JS for the webplayer alone) 2) It is impossible to optimize, debug or inspect any of that code in the target setting. Neither of these engines have ever demonstrated code running on mobile browsers for good reasons, they can't. Meanwhile, engines designed specifically for the web, for example, PlayCanvas [https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com] let you create content that works on every device, down to the likes of the iPhone 4S and comes in much smaller download sizes. e.g. http://tanx.playcanvas.com http://tanx.playcanvas.com (~1MB) http://mmx.playcanvas.com http://mmx.playcanvas.com (~3MB) http://swooop.playcanvas.com http://swooop.playcanvas.com (~10MB) All of which work on mobile browsers. The future of Web 3D is not compilation of desktop game engines. It's engine's designed to be web (and mobile) first.
- shadowmint 11y ago
  If you can compile it, runs runs horribly horribly slowly. Sometimes the compiles work... some times not. Some things work, others not, but obviously thats not documented anywhere, its just trial and error. Dont bother. Its lightyears worse than unity, and thats saying something.
thearn4 11y ago
Just a quick note: NASA is not a unified entity marching in lockstep. This was one org-unit's decision made for their own work. I work with a lab at NASA GRC that uses Unity engine pretty extensively for scientific visualization.
simonz05 11y ago
We have a product which used to run on Unity Webplayer. After the Chrome NPAPI deprecation we lost about 50% of our users. WebGL wasn't done and still isn't really working. Our experience is the same as described in the article. Memory usage and multi million lines of compressed JavaScript will cause most of our users computers to freeze or lag out. Any user with less than 4 GB and on Chrome will have a pretty bad experience. FireFox is far ahead here and runs much better. Edit: Direct to one of our games using WebGL and websockets. http://www.kogama.com/games/play/68818/?webgl=1&da=0 http://www.kogama.com/games/play/68818/?webgl=1&da=0
- exodust 11y ago
  That's pretty cool. So that's not the Unity webplayer, so what is it? Good draw distance. Crazy stuff in there! Edit.. The loading experience was a bit clunky for me btw. I'm assuming it's not the Unity plugin you're using here, but I think Unity would have done better with loading!
  - simonz05 11y ago
    Didn't formulate myself very well. It's the Unity WebGL export using WebSockets for the network component.
azakai 11y ago
The article puts too much blame on Unity and not enough blame on browser vendors. This is hinted at in the article: > Browsers are the programs which eat all of a computer's free memory, and the half-finished Unity WebGL build often causes crashes and closes browser tabs (especially in Chrome). The main problem is that Chrome has deprecated NPAPI before it is capable of running content like Unity well. If you look at Unity's forums, you can see lots of posts talking about Chrome-specific issues, for example http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/webgl-issue-on-chrome.336871/ http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/webgl-issue-on-chrome.33687... http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/bugs-in-chrome-stuttering-and-javascript-error-on-reloading-page.337880/ http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/bugs-in-chrome-stuttering-a... As those threads say, many Unity games run well in other browsers, but since Chrome is dominant in the market (over 50%), poor Chrome performance makes Unity look bad. But this isn't Unity's fault. Chrome decided to deprecate NPAPI now, before it has a good-enough solution for running large asm.js codebases. For example, on the Massive asm.js benchmark, Chrome is well behind both Firefox and Edge, http://www.winbuzzer.com/2015/07/28/asm-js-only-benchmarking-asm-js-javascript-performance-of-microsoft-edge-vs-google-chrome-44-vs-firefox-39-xcxwbb/ http://www.winbuzzer.com/2015/07/28/asm-js-only-benchmarking...
- justinschuh 11y ago
  I want to be clear that I fully intend to spend my weekend with my family, and not arguing this with you. So, I'll avoid rehashing any of our past discussions regarding technical concerns with asm.js. However, as the person responsible for Chrome's NPAPI deprecation, I just want to set the record straight regarding Unity. Unity previously had a high quality NaCl port (long before asm.js ever existed) and I fully expected that they would continue to support it. Plus, long prior to NPAPI deprecation the Unity NPAPI plugin was on our security blocklist due to a rash of vulnerabilities. So, I don't know why Unity chose to drop support for NaCl, but it occurred well after they became aware of our plans to remove NPAPI. And if you want a public record, you'll notice that Unity 4.3 was released (without NaCl support) months after our NPAPI announcement: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/574054/can-i-use-native-client-nacl-in-unity-43.html http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/574054/can-i-use-native...
  - 11y ago
Aardwolf 11y ago
Good. Anything that goes away from Unity is good. I dislike Unity because they refuse to make their web player for Linux. So several Newgrounds games don't work for Linux users due to Unity. The Blend4Web Mars Rover demo here works perfectly for me in Linux btw, and guess what, the linked old Unity version says "unsupported platform", so, thank you NASA for thinking about more users :).
- Dantus 11y ago
  Unity's goal is to improve their WebGL builds, such that the experience is basically what you got with the WebPlayer, with the exception that no PlugIn is needed. This means, you are going to get the Unity WebPlayer experience on Linux thanks to WebGL.
zimbatm 11y ago
Blend4Web homepage with nice demos: https://github.com/TriumphLLC/Blend4Web https://github.com/TriumphLLC/Blend4Web
exodust 11y ago
To be fair, the previous Unity version he links to is obviously a beta design. It actually says "beta" at the top. For me, the Unity version loads and runs smoothly. The Blend4Web version seems more polished because it is more polished. They've toned down the lighting, completely changed the interface, and reduced the map area.. you're confined to quite a small space. The Unity version you can drive further, only the ground texture needed work. Zoom out though and you'll see why the ground texture is more blurry than the Blend4Web version. I'm sure Blend4Web is great, but what isn't great is that Blender is required!
- efnx 11y ago
  But isn't Unity required when using the Unity plugin? Blender is at least open source!
  - exodust 11y ago
    Yeh true. I was responding more to his criticisms of that version based on the quality of the product... Bezuhoff says: "Honestly, it looks like an unfinished game. The scene loads slowly (especially the terrain), functionality is primitive – you can only drive, the overall picture is of horrible quality." I think that's a bit unfair considering it only looks like an abandoned game because it is an abandoned game.
sandworm101 11y ago
Is nasa doing this stuff in-house? I've never thought of nasa as experts on software beyond control systems. Have they brought in some gaming people to help with media relations?
jimmaswell 11y ago
Was it that necessary to keep it in the browser? Why not just give it to the user as a normal Unity build download instead of redoing everything to keep it on the browser?
eggy 11y ago
I wonder how big the deliverable is compared with Unity, UE4 or other similar solutions? I am a long-time Blender user, but I have never used this in any of its previous versions. It seems it supports a lot of the things from Blender - materials, lights, and others. I will have to see how much can be directly used in the transition. I am not very clear on GPL. If I use it for my company, but I choose to release the source, do I still have to pay for a commercial license or is the open source license adequate? I know the commercial license comes with a lot of support material.

150 points by felhr 11y ago

It's very simple: Unity was never designed with a target platform as radical as HTML5/JS/WebGL in mind. It's stuck with an older version of the Mono runtime for its scripting language, and they've pulled off some crazy tricks to get it to work on WebGL: Mono IL code is cross-compiled to C++, which then gets cross-compiled again to JS/WebGL using Emscripten. That it works at all is nothing short of a miracle. However, compatibility and performance will be really hard to get up to a decent standard, especially when compared to engines that were built from the ground up for WebGL, such as Blend4Web. Long story short: if WebGL is your primary target platform, Unity is not exactly the first place you should look.

pjmlp 11y ago
Quite true. If one main goal is WebGL then the best option is to adopt a WebGL native engine, instead of trying to cram a native experience into the browser.
- azakai 11y ago
  It depends on the functionality you need. Unity does a lot more than lightweight WebGL engines do. Of course, if a lightweight WebGL engine is enough - and it might well be the case for this NASA app, which doesn't need sophisticated AI, physics, scripting, effects, etc. - then that is the better route. There are also middle grounds between a native WebGL engine and a full native engine like Unity. There are lightweight native engines, like Cube 2, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread and there are even lighter than that. There isn't a dichotomy between native and compiled game engines. In fact, some native WebGL game engines use compiled portions, like PlayCanvas which uses ammo.js, a compiled native physics engine, https://github.com/playcanvas/engine https://github.com/playcanvas/engine
  - peterashford 11y ago
    Someone calling Unity "sophisticated" makes me laugh. It's a poorly implemented bugfest.
jebblue 11y ago
I doubt WebGL will be a serious competitor to any platform 3D engine for at least another decade, probably two.
- lisivka 11y ago
  I exported my home from SweetHome3D into Blender, then into HTML5 using blend4web and it looks surprisingly good both on my fresh $100 smartphone and on my $600 notebook. I just added another source of light to make shadows softer. I reading book about Blender because I want to add walkability to home, but I have no idea how. :-)
  - codewithcheese 11y ago
    Sounds like you really love your home :-)
    - lisivka 11y ago
      I hoped that I will start building of my home in 2014, but revolution and war with Russia delayed it. I bought plan of "Starboard Solar home" built in Boulder, Colorado 30 years ago. It uses Trombe wall to heat and/or cool home. I will also use G.R.E.B. technology to build "Passivhaus". Unfortunately, I spent all my savings at revolution, so now I am waiting until I will have at least $15K in savings to build enclosure, so I am spending my time to make building plan detailed and SweetHome3D is perfect tool for that, except that it is hard to share 3D model with others. Export to HTML5 solved my problem: I can just display home levels on my cheap 5,5" smartphone or share it using Google Drive. IMHO, export of 3D models to HTML5 is superb technology and will be used everywhere. For example, clothes shop can use it to display clothes on model of customer, in dynamic (walking, dancing, running, etc.). Car shop can use it to provide virtual test drive. Constructions shop can use it to let customer practice with tools and materials. Anybody willing to start SaaS startup in that area? I am working for outsource firm, so I cannot start a software startup, because I will be fired immediately and I have not enough savings, but I can be hired. I have more than 25 years of experience in programming and more than 30 of successfully finished projects (and 2 failed), I participated in few startups (e.g. Bazarvoice), I saw my code spread, e.g. in BashFAQ, etc.

mschuster91 11y ago

Hmm, about networking, could not WebSockets be used for client-server comms?

simonz05 11y ago
WebSockets work for Unity WebGL. Not sure if there is an official implementation, but we use it in a multi-player game. We specifically run Photon Game Server with WebGL and WebSockets.

deproders 11y ago

What about Unreal 4? I read that they support HTML5 pretty decently by using Emscripten. I really do not know what is their current status on that subject.

danpeddle 11y ago
It really would be interesting to know if anyone took it beyond the (amazing) demo phase.
daredevildave 11y ago
It's a push to call the Unreal 4 support decent. Unity at least have it as part of their product feature set. Unreal seem to do it only as a demonstration piece. The problem with taking a engine like Unity or Unreal and compiling to javascript is that 1) they end up with very large blobs of javascript (Unity is around 5MB of JS for the webplayer alone) 2) It is impossible to optimize, debug or inspect any of that code in the target setting. Neither of these engines have ever demonstrated code running on mobile browsers for good reasons, they can't. Meanwhile, engines designed specifically for the web, for example, PlayCanvas [https://playcanvas.com https://playcanvas.com] let you create content that works on every device, down to the likes of the iPhone 4S and comes in much smaller download sizes. e.g. http://tanx.playcanvas.com http://tanx.playcanvas.com (~1MB) http://mmx.playcanvas.com http://mmx.playcanvas.com (~3MB) http://swooop.playcanvas.com http://swooop.playcanvas.com (~10MB) All of which work on mobile browsers. The future of Web 3D is not compilation of desktop game engines. It's engine's designed to be web (and mobile) first.
shadowmint 11y ago
If you can compile it, runs runs horribly horribly slowly. Sometimes the compiles work... some times not. Some things work, others not, but obviously thats not documented anywhere, its just trial and error. Dont bother. Its lightyears worse than unity, and thats saying something.

thearn4 11y ago

Just a quick note: NASA is not a unified entity marching in lockstep. This was one org-unit's decision made for their own work. I work with a lab at NASA GRC that uses Unity engine pretty extensively for scientific visualization.

simonz05 11y ago

We have a product which used to run on Unity Webplayer. After the Chrome NPAPI deprecation we lost about 50% of our users. WebGL wasn't done and still isn't really working. Our experience is the same as described in the article. Memory usage and multi million lines of compressed JavaScript will cause most of our users computers to freeze or lag out. Any user with less than 4 GB and on Chrome will have a pretty bad experience. FireFox is far ahead here and runs much better. Edit: Direct to one of our games using WebGL and websockets. http://www.kogama.com/games/play/68818/?webgl=1&da=0 http://www.kogama.com/games/play/68818/?webgl=1&da=0

exodust 11y ago
That's pretty cool. So that's not the Unity webplayer, so what is it? Good draw distance. Crazy stuff in there! Edit.. The loading experience was a bit clunky for me btw. I'm assuming it's not the Unity plugin you're using here, but I think Unity would have done better with loading!
- simonz05 11y ago
  Didn't formulate myself very well. It's the Unity WebGL export using WebSockets for the network component.

azakai 11y ago

The article puts too much blame on Unity and not enough blame on browser vendors. This is hinted at in the article: > Browsers are the programs which eat all of a computer's free memory, and the half-finished Unity WebGL build often causes crashes and closes browser tabs (especially in Chrome). The main problem is that Chrome has deprecated NPAPI before it is capable of running content like Unity well. If you look at Unity's forums, you can see lots of posts talking about Chrome-specific issues, for example http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/webgl-issue-on-chrome.336871/ http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/webgl-issue-on-chrome.33687... http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/bugs-in-chrome-stuttering-and-javascript-error-on-reloading-page.337880/ http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/bugs-in-chrome-stuttering-a... As those threads say, many Unity games run well in other browsers, but since Chrome is dominant in the market (over 50%), poor Chrome performance makes Unity look bad. But this isn't Unity's fault. Chrome decided to deprecate NPAPI now, before it has a good-enough solution for running large asm.js codebases. For example, on the Massive asm.js benchmark, Chrome is well behind both Firefox and Edge, http://www.winbuzzer.com/2015/07/28/asm-js-only-benchmarking-asm-js-javascript-performance-of-microsoft-edge-vs-google-chrome-44-vs-firefox-39-xcxwbb/ http://www.winbuzzer.com/2015/07/28/asm-js-only-benchmarking...

justinschuh 11y ago
I want to be clear that I fully intend to spend my weekend with my family, and not arguing this with you. So, I'll avoid rehashing any of our past discussions regarding technical concerns with asm.js. However, as the person responsible for Chrome's NPAPI deprecation, I just want to set the record straight regarding Unity. Unity previously had a high quality NaCl port (long before asm.js ever existed) and I fully expected that they would continue to support it. Plus, long prior to NPAPI deprecation the Unity NPAPI plugin was on our security blocklist due to a rash of vulnerabilities. So, I don't know why Unity chose to drop support for NaCl, but it occurred well after they became aware of our plans to remove NPAPI. And if you want a public record, you'll notice that Unity 4.3 was released (without NaCl support) months after our NPAPI announcement: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/574054/can-i-use-native-client-nacl-in-unity-43.html http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/574054/can-i-use-native...
- 11y ago

Aardwolf 11y ago

Good. Anything that goes away from Unity is good. I dislike Unity because they refuse to make their web player for Linux. So several Newgrounds games don't work for Linux users due to Unity. The Blend4Web Mars Rover demo here works perfectly for me in Linux btw, and guess what, the linked old Unity version says "unsupported platform", so, thank you NASA for thinking about more users :).

Dantus 11y ago
Unity's goal is to improve their WebGL builds, such that the experience is basically what you got with the WebPlayer, with the exception that no PlugIn is needed. This means, you are going to get the Unity WebPlayer experience on Linux thanks to WebGL.

zimbatm 11y ago

Blend4Web homepage with nice demos: https://github.com/TriumphLLC/Blend4Web https://github.com/TriumphLLC/Blend4Web

exodust 11y ago

To be fair, the previous Unity version he links to is obviously a beta design. It actually says "beta" at the top. For me, the Unity version loads and runs smoothly. The Blend4Web version seems more polished because it is more polished. They've toned down the lighting, completely changed the interface, and reduced the map area.. you're confined to quite a small space. The Unity version you can drive further, only the ground texture needed work. Zoom out though and you'll see why the ground texture is more blurry than the Blend4Web version. I'm sure Blend4Web is great, but what isn't great is that Blender is required!

efnx 11y ago
But isn't Unity required when using the Unity plugin? Blender is at least open source!
- exodust 11y ago
  Yeh true. I was responding more to his criticisms of that version based on the quality of the product... Bezuhoff says: "Honestly, it looks like an unfinished game. The scene loads slowly (especially the terrain), functionality is primitive – you can only drive, the overall picture is of horrible quality." I think that's a bit unfair considering it only looks like an abandoned game because it is an abandoned game.

sandworm101 11y ago

Is nasa doing this stuff in-house? I've never thought of nasa as experts on software beyond control systems. Have they brought in some gaming people to help with media relations?

jimmaswell 11y ago

Was it that necessary to keep it in the browser? Why not just give it to the user as a normal Unity build download instead of redoing everything to keep it on the browser?

eggy 11y ago

I wonder how big the deliverable is compared with Unity, UE4 or other similar solutions? I am a long-time Blender user, but I have never used this in any of its previous versions. It seems it supports a lot of the things from Blender - materials, lights, and others. I will have to see how much can be directly used in the transition. I am not very clear on GPL. If I use it for my company, but I choose to release the source, do I still have to pay for a commercial license or is the open source license adequate? I know the commercial license comes with a lot of support material.