Playing video games through a browser can be a painful experience, especially if your laptop or home computer is not powerful enough. However, Firefox and Unity are hoping to make the experience more seamless, and a lot better compared to what is available right now.
Today Mozilla revealed at the Game Developer's Conference that a Unity add-on will come to Firefox by the end of the year. It will allow Unity based games to be played from within the browser by way of asm.js and WebGL. This is a very interesting move by Mozilla, and one that could put Firefox at the forefront of gaming within the browser.
Already, Firefox is on the verge of being optimized for Epic's Unreal Engine 4, and we expect others to come on board in the near and distant future as web apps begins to take off tremendously.
The first game to showcase what Firefox and Unity is capable of is a game called Dead Trigger 2. By what we have seen in the demonstration video, it runs silky smooth at what appears to be a decent amount of frames per second.
"Millions of Unity developers will have the opportunity to export their Unity content directly to the Web without the friction of plugins while maintaining smooth and silky gameplay. To demonstrate this technology in action, Unity and Mozilla are showcasing a preview of the popular game, Dead Trigger 2, running in Firefox at near-native speed," says Mozilla via its blog.
Mozilla hopes to prove that asm.js is a compelling enough tool for helping graphics on the web get close to native code speeds. It won't be easy, but with continued development, anything is possible.
"We believe WebGL and asm.js will be driving the future of gaming on the Web. We're happy to see the platform mature and look forward to helping to drive its evolution," said Ralph Hauwert, Senior Developer, Unity Technologies. "Our work with Mozilla has been incredibly productive. Together we have overcome many challenges, so that today we can announce the WebGL deployment add-on for Unity that will provide the best possible experience that our developers have come to expect."
Bear in mind that Unity games will work in all browsers with support for WebGL but will run faster in Firefox.
