Ab4d.sharpEngine for the browser RC1 published

I am really excited to inform you that the release candidate version of the Ab4d.SharpEngine has been published.

This brings many great and easy-to-use 3D graphics tools to the browser. But what excites me the most is how fast the native (WebAssembly) 3D rendering engine runs.

See the following screenshot:

You can also check the video here.

Or check it live in the browser.

Notice the performance figures in the lower right corner:

• It takes only 0.68 ms to calculate the directions for 40.000 arrows (for each arrow, a 4x4 transformation matrix is calculated that points the arrow towards the animated yellow sphere; this time also includes the time to upload the matrices to the GPU)
• It takes less than 0.1 ms to render 2.8 million triangles.

On the left side of the screenshot, you can see the common list of samples that is almost the same as in the desktop version of the samples. There are 76 different samples available for the browser version. And what is more, 100% of the source code for the samples is the same as the code for the desktop version of the samples. There are only a few #if that are required because the browser does not support direct file loading and supports only async IO operations. Also, some #if are also needed because some features are not (yet) supported in the browser, for example, line caps or vertex color material.

Anyway, this means that almost all the code that you write for desktop and mobile devices can be shared with the code that runs on the browser.

Some of the features that are currently not available in the browser version are:

• wide lines support: WebGL does not support wide lines or geometry shader, so currently all lines are rendered with line thickness set to 1
• pixels rendering
• Submeshes and MultiMaterialModelNode
• VertexColorMaterial
• ID Bitmap rendering for hit testing
• Sprites
• CameraAxisNode and other overlays, for example, ModelMover, ModelRotator and ModelScalar
• PostProcessing

However, the current version already supports some of the more advanced features, such as Boolean operations, slicing, vector fonts, and more.

Please check the RC version, and I am sure you will also be excited about the new possibilities it brings. Note that if you want to test the library in your own application, you will need to call SetLicense method to activate the license (the beta version did not require that). You can use an existing license from Ab4d.SharpEngine or generate a new trial license..

And please report any issues to the Issues on the GitHub. Note that a known issue is an invalid page layout where the slider is shown on some devices.

I am planning to release the first version in March.