Web workers and Babylon.js

[binyan]

Hi guys,

Recently I've tried out the web workers with babylon.js. It's pretty cool, because you can move some heavy computations (like vertex data generation) out of the UI thread.

However the minified version of babylon.js cannot be used with web workers, since they only have an access to a very limited scope of DOM objects. Thus, since the minified version of babylon.js contains some calls to
web-workers-non-supported objects (such as window), it throws an error. 

I think it would be great to divide the minified version into two: babylon.js which would contain "Pure" Javascript (or TypeScript) code, and web_babylon.js which would contain the code which uses a web related stuff (more precisely - calls to the objects which are not supported by Web Workers). 

What do you think?

[GameMonetize]

Could you be more explicit on that? I think that everything related to webgl, canvas and images will not work with workers right?

[binyan]

Yup, it won't.

Web workers only have access to the following:

• XMLHttpRequest
• Application Cache
• create other web workers
• navigator object
• location object
• setTimeout method
• clearTimeout method
• setInterval method
• clearInterval method
• importScripts method
• JSON
• Worker

Possible implementation maybe dividing the namespace into three layers:

1. Logic - all the data and computation classes. 

2. Web - all the web related stuff, such as IndexDB, window events, etc.

3. WebGL pipe - classes which are responsible for passing the calculated data to WebGL.

 

Of course it is very simplified vision, and I'm sure there is a lot of pitfalls there, but I think it worth to think about some refactoring to support Web Workers in babylon.js.

[GameMonetize]

It is also a HUGE amount of work

[binyan]

You are right   These just my thoughts 

But as a first step you might divide the existing scripts to 2 categories - those who touch Web functionality and those who don't.

For example, I think all the functionality of Babylon.Math can be used in Web Worker.

[kevzettler]

Sorry for digging up old post but I'd like to add that this modular separation would be good for using Babylonjs in on a multiplayer authroitive server role where you also don't have access to browser objects like window and DOM