Newsletter โ€“ Issue 015

๐Ÿ“† 2023-05-03

๐Ÿ”ฅ Headlines

๐ŸŽ™ The Interview with Steven Yau (opens in a new tab) (yaustar (opens in a new tab)) is out! Learn about the games industry from a veteran game developer who has worked for EA, King, and PlayCanvas PlayCanvas at Snapchat. Steven shared his thoughts on the web games ecosystem, monetization, web engines, and more. Come find Steven and the rest of us on Discord (opens in a new tab)!

Babylon.js Microsoft released Babylon.js 6.0 (opens in a new tab)! See the announcement article (opens in a new tab) and video (opens in a new tab). The release includes Performance Priority modes that can produce up to 50x faster rendering and performance, fluid rendering, improved screen-space reflections, texture decals, new glTF extensions support, Node Material Ray Marching, new Tri-Planar and Bi-Planar nodes, and the v1 of the GUI Editor. But the feature that is getting the most attention is the integration of Havok (opens in a new tab), a physics engine that powers numerous AAA games (opens in a new tab). This Havok integration comes with a complete overhaul of the Babylon.js Physics API with Physics V2. Physics V2 performs up to 20x faster than V1, which is based on either Cannon.js, Oimo.js, or Ammo.js. Try Havok in the Playroom demo (opens in a new tab)!

This is all fantastic news for Babylon.js users, but that doesn't end there. Havok for the Web is also available as an MIT-licensed standalone Wasm library (opens in a new tab) that can be used with any engine and is available on NPM (opens in a new tab) with TypeScript typings! ๐Ÿ˜ N8 (opens in a new tab) already created a Three.js integration demo (opens in a new tab) (repo (opens in a new tab)) with 10.000 rigid bodies.

WebGPU Chrome 113 is out of the beta channel and rolling out to stable (opens in a new tab), so WebGPU is now available to up-to-date Chrome users without any flag. Let the revolution begin! ๐ŸŽ‰

๐Ÿ›  Tools & Updates

Three.js WebXR ion 3D Engine (opens in a new tab) by Samrun (opens in a new tab) โ€“ A new library for building 3D websites and VR experiences, powered by Three.js. It seems particularly useful to create 3D UIs for VR.

๐Ÿค– recast-navigation-js (opens in a new tab) โ€“ A WebAssembly port of Recast Navigation (opens in a new tab) with Three.js integration (opens in a new tab) by Isaac Mason (opens in a new tab), bringing Recast's navmesh generation, pathfinding, and crowd simulation to JavaScript (demo 1 (opens in a new tab), demo 2 (opens in a new tab)).

๐ŸŽพ Jolt Physics (opens in a new tab) by Jorrit Rouwe (opens in a new tab) reached v3.0.0 (opens in a new tab) and is now available on NPM (opens in a new tab). Isaac Mason (opens in a new tab) created a R3F demo (opens in a new tab).

๐Ÿ“ก PartyKit (opens in a new tab), an early-access platform to build real-time apps and games deployed at the edge by Sunil Pai (opens in a new tab) (creator of Glamor, ex-React core team), went open source.

WebGPU And last but not least, WebGPU devtools (opens in a new tab) (repo (opens in a new tab), Chrome extension (opens in a new tab)) by takahiro (opens in a new tab).

๐ŸŽฌ Videos

โœ๏ธ Content

๐ŸŽฎ Games

โœจ Demos

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