Google 's Chrome 94 beta announcement says it implements some new web standards that could make the browser-based gaming experience even better.
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The soon-to-be-released WebCodecs could make cloud gaming easier and faster, while the experimental WebGPU could make it easier for developers of games that run in the browser to harness the power of your computer.
WebCodecs is an API designed to give developers better access to the video codecs that handle video streams. While there are already methods for playing video in Chrome, they aren't necessarily designed for things like cloud gaming, which is best when it has the lowest latency possible. WebCodecs is designed to avoid overhead by making it easier to get the incoming video stream to your screen as quickly as possible, possibly with the help of hardware decoding. This should also, in theory, make it perform better on slower machines (which are the kinds of computers where cloud gaming is most desirable anyway).
The newer, more experimental WebGPU gives web developers better access to your computer’s graphics horsepower by letting them tap into your computer’s native graphics API (similar to Apple’s Metal, Microsoft’s DirectX 12, or Vulkan). In simple terms, it makes it easier for web developers to “talk” to your graphics card in a language it understands, without having to go through other layers that could slow things down. It’s a next-generation version of WebGL, which allows developers to take advantage of the OpenGL. In the future, the technology will make it easier for developers to make better graphics in games that run in the browser, taking full advantage of the power of current-generation GPUs.
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Both technologies work outside of gaming, too. In a July 2020 keynote, Google mentioned that Zoom was interested in using WebCodecs in its video conferencing, and that WebGPU could be used to render 3D models in the browser or accelerate machine learning models. Both pieces of technology are open standards, developed by the W3C, and other browser makers have begun testing them as well.
Of course, we probably won't see experiences powered by WebCodecs or WebGPU anytime soon. While WebCodecs is indeed close to release, developers will have to make their apps work with it. As for WebGPU, it's currently in an experimental phase, which Google expects to end in early 2022. Whether it ends up as a feature depends on how the testing goes, whether the specifications are met, and whether there are enough people interested in using it.
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While these technologies may not do things that were previously impossible, they are certainly exciting. When things are easier or more flexible, the barrier to entry for developers is lowered. For gamers who want to play online, whether through streaming or native games, the time developers spend figuring out how to get frames to the screen is time they could be spending improving other parts of the experience.
