NativeDawn plugin

[CedricGuillemet]

No description provided.

[matthargett]

can we coordinate a little more on these kinds of changes? I spent months on the wgpu-native backing for this integration, and you all said you wouldn't be switching off of bgfx. I feel like I'm being as transparent and inclusive as I can, but I'm getting a bit of whiplash with this sudden change in policy (even if it favors my goals).

[CedricGuillemet]

can we coordinate a little more on these kinds of changes? I spent months on the wgpu-native backing for this integration, and you all said you wouldn't be switching off of bgfx. I feel like I'm being as transparent and inclusive as I can, but I'm getting a bit of whiplash with this sudden change in policy (even if it favors my goals).

This is only an experiment. Taking a closer look at #1605 is also on my todolist. We are also investing time on CI testing and harness. No need to worry , we won't forget you :)

[bghgary]

We are still in the middle of planning with some prototyping/experiments. See here for some idea of what we are up to: BabylonJS/Babylon-Lite#10.

[CedricGuillemet]

Babylon-Lite bundles on NativeDawn/WebGPU

Ran all 216 Babylon-Lite scene bundles through the Playground on the NativeDawn/WebGPU backend. Tested with the V8 JS engine (the WebGPU bootstrap is V8-only; ChakraCore fails).

~124 scenes render correctly — PBR/glTF, IBL/HDR, shadows (incl. CSM), skinning/morph/VAT, most NME materials, frame-graph post-processes (DoF/TAA/bloom), gizmos, geospatial camera, .babylon (Sponza), grid material, floating-origin, etc.

~92 don't work, grouped by reason:

Reason	Scenes
WASM not fetchable — Havok physics	40-42,44-49,100-106,209
WASM — Recast navigation	170,172,173
WASM — manifold CSG	91
WASM — basis/KTX2, meshopt, text-shaper (silent black)	36,112,211,180,181
Web Worker (Blob URL) — Gaussian Splatting, gizmos	120-129,222
Blob.stream/ReadableStream missing	66,72,140
Canvas 2D API incomplete (sprites, DynamicTexture)	18,24,25,50-57,90,92-98,117,118,145,146,179,205,206
Multi-canvas (getContext null)	227,228
Missing local lab assets (fetch) — fixable, just copy assets	58,59,73,81,83,160,171,174,175,210,254,255,257,258,259,260,266
Silent black, not yet isolated (still black post texture-fix — unrelated cause)	12,30,63,149,153,263,264

Physics/nav/gaussian-splatting fail as expected (no web workers + feature .wasm can't be fetched). The biggest fixable buckets are the Canvas-2D API and the missing-local-assets.

How to test a lite bundle

1. In the Babylon-Lite repo, build the lib and bundle a scene as a single self-contained IIFE classic script (the default build:bundle-scenes output is ESM+code-split, which the Playground's classic LoadScript can't load):

   pnpm build:lib
   # esbuild: bundle:true, splitting:false, format:"iife",
   #   alias babylon-lite -> packages/babylon-lite/build/lib
   # -> lab/public/bundle/sceneN.playground.js
   

2. Copy sceneN.playground.js into the Playground Scripts/ dir.
3. Run it with the V8 build:

   Playground.exe --headless app:///Scripts/sceneN.playground.js
   

   (drop --headless to see the window). Any root-relative asset (/foo.png) is redirected to app:///Scripts/foo.png, so place sibling assets there.

How to test the glTF texture fix

# the exact bug case (renders textured, not black):
Playground.exe --headless --test "BoomBox with Unlit" app:///Scripts/validation_native.js
# -> "No pixel difference!"  /  "GLTF BoomBox with Unlit Material validated"

# full validation suite:
Playground.exe --headless app:///Scripts/validation_native.js
# -> Run complete. ran=259 passed=259 failed=0

[laurentdiazfr]

@CedricGuillemet What are your thoughts on https://github.com/wcandillon/react-native-webgpu as a Dawn backend? Would being tied to React Native be a limitation for what you're trying to achieve? React native and Expo excosystem is huge nowadays, it will increase the adoption of babylon native.

[CedricGuillemet]

@laurentdiazfr https://github.com/wcandillon/react-native-webgpu looks great and being able to use Lite directly is awesome. BabylonNative corresponds to different needs (same for BRN). For example, usage of XR or tight integration of native libraries with Babylon. The more possibilities, the better, I think. For example, fills the gap when a user wants to integrate 3D in a native android app.

[matthargett]

FYI, expanded my wgpu branch suite based on the report above. A few fixes is that branch, but there's several more WHATWG/W3C API compliance issues that need fixing to expand it to the fuller screenshot suite on browsers.

I submitted those PRs into JsRuntimeHost, and validated them locally on macOS 26, iOS 18, and Android 12 (Pico XR). I tested across JSC and QuickJS in that matrix, but ran out of time to go further today (I spot check a lot of the screenshots etc manually so I can dig deeper into pixel differences.)

This has been a great driver to make BabylonNative competitive as a 3D-forward app runtime that stands shoulder to shoulder with other peers like deno, bun, NodeJS, and electron! Very exciting!