Comment by jauntywundrkind

From Steve Wittens, a well respected graphics hacker, and maker of the excellent Use.GPU. https://acko.net/tv/usegpu/ . I'm mostly posting to expand context, and sprinkle in a couple light options.

> Bindless resources are an absolute necessity for the modern style of rendering with nanite and raytracing.

Yeah, for real. Looking at the November 2024 post "What's next for WebGPU" and HN comments, bindless is pretty high up there! There's a high level field survey & very basic proposal (in the hackmd link), and wgpu seems to be filling in the many gaps and seemingly quite far along in implementation. Not seeing any signs yet that the broader WebGPU implementors/spec folks are involved or following along, but at least wgpu is very cross platform & well regarded.

https://developer.chrome.com/blog/next-for-webgpu https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209272 https://hackmd.io/PCwnjLyVSqmLfTRSqH0viA https://hackmd.io/@cwfitzgerald/wgpu-bindless https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues/3637 https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/380

> Would you like to render high quality lines or points? Sorry, it's not been a priority to make that simple. Better go study up on SDFs and beziers.

I realize lines and font rendering are an insanely complex fields, and that OpenGL offering at least lines and Vulkan not sure feels like a slap in the face. The work being done by groups like https://linebender.org/ is intense. Overall though that intensity makes me question the logic of trying to include it, wonders whether fighting to specify something that clearly we don't have full mastery over makes sense: even the very best folks are still improving the craft. We could specify an API without specifying an exact implementation, without conformance tests, perhaps, but that feels like a different risk. Maybe having to reach for a library that does the work reflects where we are, causes the iteration & development we sort of need?

> actually producing a lit, shaded and occlusioned image with PBR, indirect lighting, antialiasing and postfx

I admit to envying the ambition to make this simple, to have such a great deep knowledge as Steve and to think such hard things possible.

I really really am so thankful and hope funding can continue for the incredibly hard work of developing webgpu specs & implementations, and wgpu. As @animats chimes in in the HN submission, bindless in particular is quite a crisis, which either will enable the web to go forward, or remain a lasting real barrier to the web's growth. Really seems to be the tension of Steve's opening position:

> WebGPU is both years too late, and just a bit early. Wheras WebGL was OpenGL circa 2005, WebGPU is native graphics circa 2015.