Unity 5.3 brings a series of improvements which are relevant to WebGL developers:
So far, WebGL in Unity has been available as an unsupported preview technology. With Unity 5.3, we are dropping the “Preview” label and making WebGL an officially supported build target. Our Premium and Enterprise support plans will now cover support tickets for the WebGL platform.
Unity 5.3 delivers a bunch of improvements to WebGL developers as listed above. 5.2 and 5.1 have delivered similar improvements in the past. So we feel that WebGL in Unity has come a long way since we launched it in 5.0. Similarly, browser technology has improved over that timeframe. Microsoft shipped its new Edge browser in Windows 10, which supports asm.js and which runs Unity WebGL content much better the Internet Explorer 11 ever did, giving you a wider potential audience for Unity WebGL content.
So, the WebGL platform has significantly improved since we shipped the Preview in 5.0. However, this does not mean that all features of Unity will now suddenly work in WebGL, or that performance will now match native builds, or even that any content will reliably run on any browser. There are improvements in each of these areas, but they happen very gradually. Overall, however, we feel that we have a product which works well within the constraints of the platform, and we think that this is a good time to start officially supporting the WebGL build target. We have put a lot of work into our documentation to make it clearly state what limitations you are expected to run into and on what browsers.
Our WebGL deployment solution relies heavily on web technologies provided by the browsers. We have been working closely with all the major browser vendors over the past few years to drive incremental improvements of these technologies.
Mozilla’s Director of Platform Product Management, Martin Best said “Today marks a milestone as Unity takes the next steps to provide full support for the WebGL export target. Mozilla pioneered technologies such as asm.js, WebGL, and Emscripten that make this possible and we are energized to continue working closely with Unity and other browser makers to create the best gaming experiences on the Web.” More info on Mozilla's blog.
At Microsoft, David Catuhe, Principal Program Manager focused on Edge and Open Web Standards commented: "WebGL and asm.js in Microsoft Edge are an important part of providing a complete web experience to Windows 10 users. By releasing its WebGL build target, Unity enables developers to deliver great gaming experiences on the Web to our users. It’s also a great opportunity for us to continue to work together on improving WebGL, asm.js and other enhancements we are bringing to the web platform."
Google Chrome WebGL team Brandon Jones, Zhenyao Mo and Ken Russell expressed similar sentiment for the developer community, declaring: "Unity's support for HTML5 and WebGL deployments is one of the most exciting developments in the ecosystem to date. Developers worldwide will bring their amazing content to the web using Unity's toolchain. We look forward to continuing to improve the performance and functionality of the web platform to enable even more exciting interactive content."
We believe that Unity's WebGL export is the future of gaming on the web. Join the list of Unity WebGL titles already published to the web today, such as Heroes Of Paragon, Spider Box, Big Buck Hunter.
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