Intent to Implement: Uniform Subscription API
Owen Glofcheski
Primary eng/PM emails
orgl...@chromium.org
brian...@chromium.org
Additional Contacts
Spec
None. This feature is largely experimental with somewhat niche use cases, as such vendors have not been contact as of yet.
Summary
Intended for use with WebGL. The API would allow users to subscribe to a set of input uniforms which would be automatically populated in their shaders. Decreases perceived latency for operations performed against these uniforms.
Motivation
By populating some data deeper in the pipeline we can reduce the amount of latency between when the information is produced and when it is consumed. For example, if a user queries the mouse position and uploads it as a uniform to their shader program (as a vec2 or mat4) the mouse position could easily change before the WebGL draw commands are actually executed and displayed by the GPU Service. By adding the uniforms ourselves in the GPU service we can reduce this delay. Operations which use this extension include, but are not limited to, selection boxes, hardware cursors, etc.
Initially, the intention is to support mouse positional data only. The interface is generic to support the possibility of other uniforms in the future.
Compatibility Risk
Firefox: No public signals
Internet Explorer: No public signals
Safari: No public signals
Web developers: No signals
Describe the degree of compatibility risk you believe this change poses
None. This is a new feature. The extension doesn't do anything unless explicitly requested.
Ongoing technical constraints
None.
Will this feature be supported on all five Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux,
Chrome OS, and Android)?
Yes.
OWP launch tracking bug
crbug.com/422978
Entry in Chromium Dashboard
https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5969019181989888
Requesting approval to ship?
No.
PhistucK
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