iOS 8.0 beta and WebGL support

  • Hi,

    the new iOS 8.0 beta is out now - here my first impressions from testing it with krpano on an iPad Air and an iPad 3:

    The good news:

    • It supports WebGL with very great performance!
    • That means even faster rendering and full support for all pano projections - and it opens a door for other nice things that are possible with WebGL and might come in future krpano versions.
    • WebGL should be more stable then CSS3D because more efficient memory management and a lot of removed browser overhead.


    The bad news:

    • iOS8 beta Safari is unfortunately full of bugs...
    • The rendering of CSS3D elements is partially very very slow and leads to almost instant browser and/or system crashes!
      This is very bad, but one good thing here is that WebGL can be used instead - but this requires adding the html5=prefer+webgl setting - or even better - updating to a newer krpano version where WebGL will be preferred by default on iOS.
    • Trying to use a HTML5 video as WebGL texture throws a security error => that means still no video panos on iOS!
    • The screen height is wrong in several cases (bug demo).
    • The gyro doesn't work correctly in landscape mode on the iPad.

    That means on one side it's good to have WebGL finally also on iOS, but is very bad that CSS3D is not usable anymore and that there is no way to use videos with WebGL...


    I really hope that Apple will fix these bugs before the final iOS 8 release (all bugs are or will be reported to Apple)...

    Edit: these bugs were already fixed by newer iOS 8 beta versions

    There should be very soon an updated krpano version (1.17.4) that will be adopted for this iOS 8 beta - that means with WebGL usage by default to avoid CSS3D - and workarounds for the screen height problems.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Thanks Klaus for sharing that info with the community.

    Where this world is going? I see you more focusing now on this or that OS, this or that browser version.
    Experiences on my own tells me about strange and different behaviours of the tours depending on what system it is tested.
    Chrome, Stocks, FF..... list is long, Than variety of OS system in different versions. OMG, how we will be able to prove our projects working in the future.

    Yes I have big concerns as recently testing had increased efforts in every project so exponentially that it comes to be point where we ask our self if this is worth doing as next week this or that browser might release new update that will do some tweaks on their own and blow our work.

    What is you opinion on that? I can feel frustration of my colleagues about what the hell we can do about it?
    Not complaining about you or Krpano. I see you invest enormous efforts in fixing bugs (better to say implementing workarounds for this or that bug in this or that os/browser version) but you are also humans and there must be a point where you will have to ask and recalculate your time and efforts and think on what to do.

    Do you have/share my feelings about that the same or?

  • +1
    It is very irritating!
    It would be nice when there was just 1 browser protocol for those basic things.
    Maybe all developers should strike to force the company's to agree on that protocol.

    Tuur *thumbsup*

  • Hi,

    it's not that bad as it seems! The HTML5 support of the browsers is getting better and better, especially on Desktop and also on iOS it is basically very good. Android is the most problematic system here, but since Android 4.4, where Google has finally replaced the outdated and buggy Webkit engine of the default Android browser with a much better Chromium one, the situation is also improving.

    I only wanted to show up that krpano itself is not the reason when existing panos will not working correctly when updating to iOS 8 beta. The CSS3D bug in that current iOS 8 beta is a pretty heavy one (because it leads to system crashes), so I really hope Apple will do something here.

    The general situation is not much different to the Flashplayer days - there were also constant changes from Adobe or the browsers, like the Flash 9 to Flash 10 change or the mouse-wheel problems or the fullscreen-mode from the contextmenu problem (and many things more) that required constant updates to get everything working at the best. So it's basically business as usual, but it's a bit bad that updates are required to keep already existing and already working things still working...

    But as krpano user you shouldn't need to care about that much. Just try to find a work-flow where you can easily update to the latest krpano version. The updating itself should be pretty easy - only the krpano viewer files would need to be updated/replaced - either manually or by using the Update Tool.

    Having WebGL itself now is a very good news - technically WebGL is soo much better than CSS3D and its also very great to work with it. Expect nice new features here in the future.

    I have just released a new krpano version (1.17.4) that will be prepared for iOS 8 - WebGL will be preferred by default there and an automatic workaround for the page-height bug is included.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Things are moving around webkit comunity, here is a tweet from Dean Jackson who present the talk on webgl at WWDC 2014:

    https://twitter.com/grorgwork/status/475377235281461249

    Quote

    iOS WebGL bugs fixed this week thanks to community reports: clearing the depth buffer and support for floating point textures.

    And a bug in wekgit bugzilla is a little related to video issue :

    https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133511

    I think there will be 5 or 6 beta versions of iOs 8 before final release to public, so we can hope they fix issues listed here by Klaus

  • Hi,

    iOS 8 beta 2 was released today.

    It seems that almost all bugs from iOS 8 beta 1 were fixed there:
    - CSS3D is working again very fine
    - the iPad wrong screenheight bugs
    - the wrong gyro on landscape iPads bug

    but unfortunately there is still no video for WebGL support...

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Hi,

    iOS 8 beta 3 is there and with it the first possibility to play video panos also on iOS.

    Here a short demo video:



    My first quick testing remarks about the video support in iOS 8 beta 3:

    • it works with great performance on the iPad Air
    • but on the older iPad 3 it is pretty slow - the pano rendering itself is very fast, but the uploading of the video to the texture is very slow (I will report that to Apple, technically it should be possible to improve that)
    • the iPhone 5 works fine, but there is still the 'automatic-video-fullscreen problem' of the iPhone (bug report here)
    • the CORS support seems to be buggy...


    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • that beta is already there , when i'm right.. 17.4 should have iOS 8 support

    see here (at the bottom) http://www.krpano.com/forum/wbb/inde…54098#post54098

    Klaus,
    any idea when they publicly release iOS 8?

    Tuur *thumbsup*

  • Already tested, the simple example play the video in canvas tag in equirectangular format.
    All the 3D webgl rendering stuff seems missing.
    iOS 8 will be released around 1-15th of september, iOS 7 was released the 18th september 2013.

    Regards

  • Hi,

    WebGL support itself is basically there since krpano version 1.16.

    In version 1.17.4 only the WebGL-usage was enabled by default for iOS (before krpano was preferring CSS3D over WebGL on iOS by default) and the resolution of the WebGL canvas increased for retina support.

    In the demo videos above a preview of the next krpano version 1.18 is shown - and a new feature there is the support for pano videos when the browser is supporting WebGL and videos as textures.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • iOS 8 Beta 4 released today, any news about Krpano 360 video support ?

    iOS 8 beta 4 is horrible - don't try to install it!

    All webpages (even very simple ones) that are trying to use WebGL are crashing in beta 4!

    This single line of Javascript code is enough to crash Safari in iOS 8 beta 4:

    Code
    document.createElement("canvas").getContext("webgl");

    That means it's not possible to test video panos with it at the moment...
    Let's wait for beta 5...

  • iOS 8 beta 4 is horrible - don't try to install it!

    All webpages (even very simple ones) that are trying to use WebGL are crashing in beta 4!

    This single line of Javascript code is enough to crash Safari in iOS 8 beta 4:

    Code
    document.createElement("canvas").getContext("webgl");

    That means it's not possible to test video panos with it at the moment...
    Let's wait for beta 5...

    I'm glad it's not just me that ran into this Klaus.
    I actually had that happen for me during testing in the Beta 3, the Beta 4 update came through but the issue seems to have persisted (no wipe/reset and restore to previous backup was able to restore it into working order again!).

    globule22 is Web GL still working for you at all in the beta 4?

    On mine it just results in the 'A problem occured with this webpage' error loop (until the 'A problem repeatedly occured...' screen). -- I take it that's what you see too Klaus.

    Will be following here to see if you guys have any progress, but for me at least Web GL has totally stopped working (iPad mini w/ retina).

    Adam

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!