That last WebGL is cool in many ways!

Quote Originally Posted by Dan View Post
I also agree that for any serious projects for mobile devices, javascript is just not fast enough. so it's best to be able to do both the javascript and the native binary.
It's a mixed bag TBH.

On the desktop, Chrome V8 can run right up there with .Net, Java and Delphi in most scenarios, and I've occasionally seen it pull some stunts that required use of ASM to beat with Delphi or FreePascal, especially on floating point tasks. FireFox SpiderMonkey has nice tricks, but is often lagging behind V8.

On mobile platforms, the king is iOS Safari, for some reason Chrome for Android's V8 doesn't seem to be in the same league as its desktop brother, and Chrome for Android generally isn't quite up to iOS standards in the web graphics department.
When graphics are involved, Safari can really push the pixels, pity Apple still hasn't enabled WebGL... Given what I've seen with CSS 3D demos, guess having WebGL in Safari would get the browser competitive with most apps, with only special cases out of reach.

Also node-webkit really shines on the desktop, it starts instantaneously and performance is as good as, if not better, than regular Chrome (they don't have the overhead a proper browser has). They have plans for mobile versions, I'd really like to see if their Android one could run better than the classic PhoneGap approach or Chrome for Android.

I currently have a non-game related project underway, a plant floor scheduling Gantt chart, being developed in SmartPascal. The graphics are 2D, but involve a lot of under-the-hood trees, hashes, lists and other high-level structures, light on maths but heavy on graph logic, and so far HTML+JS holds its own at least as well as Delphi would IME, and better in the graphics department. Tendering is all anti-aliased Canvas, with paths, brushes, gradients... and everything is properly hardware accelerated AFAICT on the usual suspects. And it runs everywhere "out of the box", which is mighty comfortable.