Unreal Engine 5 Successfully Run Through Web Browser Using WebGPU API
Recently, X/Twitter user “moon” posted a screenshot showing that Unreal Engine 5 can be run through the WebGPU API, which means that someone has successfully run Unreal Engine 5 through a web browser. This post has been confirmed by those involved in the project to be feasible.
The screenshot comes from a technology demo from Wonder Interactive, which has been experimenting with integrating Unreal Engine support into web browsers through WebGL and the WebGPU API.
WebGPU is a new technology of modern Web graphics API and WebGL that provides higher performance and modern feature support for Web Apps. Through WebGPU, developers can be provided with low-level access to the GPU, thereby improving rendering efficiency and providing more available functions.
In a tweet, Wonder Interactive CEO Alex St. Louis shared a sneak peek of Unreal Engine 5 running in WebGPU, with multi-threaded rendering, many performance optimizations, and the star of the show… an asset streaming system.
Although the project has not yet been announced to the public, St. Louis has said that the project will combine multi-threaded rendering and asset streaming systems to speed up the loading speed of such graphic demonstrations, which is particularly important for Web-oriented applications.
It is worth mentioning that according to the company’s introduction to Khronos (the organization responsible for WebGPU development), Wonder Interactive’s goal is not only to support Unreal Engine, but also to support Unity, Godot and O3DE on the Web for better applicability.
At present, the company has implemented Unreal Engine 4.27 running on a web browser, and has also released a demo called Spacelancers. Those who are interested can go and learn about it.