WebAssembly

[Amon1973 1,421]

12 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

Ok, so you just agreed with me, in your own convoluted way.

Agree with you? I'm not too sure if we agree on very much, unless you believe that MSFS will be the best flight sim for GA and IFR with "study level" aircraft along with fantastic visuals, if your think that then yes I agree with you.

[GlideBy 324]

No one that has said anything negative about Webassembly had actually seen the modified Webassembly that will ship with the sim.  There has been zero information from people that had used the modified Webassembly, that it won't work.  Zero.  (Too many people are confusing it for a browser version of Webassembly, which this is not.)

Also, Asobo has very clearly stated they are not done with Webassembly.  So even if it has issues, which it will, there is no reason to believe they won't be addressed.

Do people not understand Alpha?  I don't think you would judge the sim as final, so why judge the SDK as final?

[mSparks 2,086]

18 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

No one that has said anything negative about Webassembly had actually seen the modified Webassembly that will ship with the sim.

Here's a snip of some pretty basic webassembly for you

Quote

(module
  (import "js" "memory" (memory 1))
  (import "js" "table" (table 1 funcref))
  (type $void_to_i32 (func (result i32)))
  (func (export "doIt") (result i32)
   i32.const 0
   i32.const 42
   i32.store  ;; store 42 at address 0
   i32.const 0
   call_indirect (type $void_to_i32))
)

what modifications, roughly, were you thinking of that will make that your favourite choice for creating high fidelity aircraft addons.

Edited April 10, 2020 by mSparks

[GlideBy 324]

@mSparks Please read the whole sentence.  The Webassembly that ships with the sim.   Please, please, please, stop talking about Webassembly for a browser.  

And if you still don't understand, would your program for Auto ATC work without the many X-Plane APIs you used?  Would you say your program doesn't work because it uses custom APIs?  

Asobo has changed Webassembly, so talking about an unmodified Webassembly is pointless.

Here, go play Doom 3 running Webassembly in a browser.  (Which is not the same as what we will get in the SDK)  https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/

[Kopteeni 819]

 

32 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Here's a snip of some pretty basic webassembly for you

what modifications, roughly, were you thinking of that will make that your favourite choice for creating high fidelity aircraft addons.

Just so everyone's aware, the code mSparks posted isn't something a developer would have to type. For whatever reason he posted a snippet of compiled webassembly code. You can easily generate that scary looking code from c++ in you browser if you're curious https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Kopteeni

[mSparks 2,086]

38 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

would your program for Auto ATC work without the many X-Plane APIs you used?

Yes, its sim independent, X-plane dependant version is free

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zem.atctrans&hl=en

no sim required version for pilot training is paid

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zem.atctranspro&hl=en

Still a work in progress.

38 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

The Webassembly that ships with the sim.   Please, please, please, stop talking about Webassembly for a browser.  

webassembly really isn't for the browser, its mostly used for server side data handling using nodejs

38 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

Would you say your program doesn't work because it uses custom APIs?

That's the first problem.

The second problem is, for the sim, it needs millisecond performance

and webassembly can take 1000000us to print "hello world".

thirdly, and the most important problem, is what the sim uses to run webassembly is completely irrelevent - you need to build and test it, which until microsoft releases dot5 is currently a complete nightmare.

All that, just for the sole purpose that you can ship unsigned code onto xbox/xbox pc. This is all WASM is providing devs - at the expense of everything else. I don't know of a single developer other than Asobo that uses javascript for their aircraft scripting, similar - for basic systems - is lua.

25 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

For whatever reason he posted a snippet of compiled webassembly code.

Because he had links and references like that several pages back and is still talking as if WASM is the left hand side not the right hand side. I thought maybe something more concrete would help him understand. but yes, that is a much better example for him to suggest what he thinks these modifications asobo have made actually are.

Edited April 10, 2020 by mSparks

[MatthewS 761]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

what modifications, roughly, were you thinking of that will make that your favourite choice for creating high fidelity aircraft addons.

You don't write WASM directly, you compile to WASM from high level languages, such as C# or C++.

[GlideBy 324]

11 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

You don't write WASM directly, you compile to WASM from high level languages, such as C# or C++.

You can write Webassembly by hand - https://blog.scottlogic.com/2018/04/26/webassembly-by-hand.html

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Concepts

In the same fashion as physical assembly languages, the WebAssembly binary format has a text representation — the two have a 1:1 correspondence. You can write or generate this format by hand and then convert it into the binary format with any of several WebAssemby text-to-binary tools.

[WarpD 824]

3 hours ago, MatthewS said:

Only Milviz and WarpD have broken the NDA (apparently).

I have broken no NDA and it is inappropriate for you to claim that I have.

[WarpD 824]

1 hour ago, GlideBy said:

Please, please, please, stop talking about Webassembly for a browser.  

What do you think the HTML gauges are using?

[MatthewS 761]

49 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

In the same fashion as physical assembly languages, the WebAssembly binary format has a text representation

Yes sure I get it... But why would anyone write WASM by hand and not use a HLL like C++ or C#, except possibly for a few performance critical core routines?

Edited April 11, 2020 by MatthewS

[Noodle 626]

1 hour ago, WarpD said:

I have broken no NDA and it is inappropriate for you to claim that I have.

Making public statements regarding the current and planned capabilities and limitations of the software and SDK is something Microsoft has specifically authorized you to do?

 

[GlideBy 324]

1 hour ago, WarpD said:

What do you think the HTML gauges are using?

Are you saying that Asobo is not making any changes at all to the Webassembly they delivered with the SDK for MSFS?  Because what I am saying is that the Webassembly that comes with the sim is modified to work with the sim.  And it is not the same as what you would get working with a browser like Chrome or Firefox.

@mSparks  Webassembly is not slow.  I guess you didn't try the link above with the 3D FPS game Doom 3 running Webassembly in a browser.

@Noodle  He didn't break the NDA.  They didn't have Webassembly at the time, so he only talked about the limitations of a browser based Webassembly.  He was careful with his wording.  

[Noodle 626]

27 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

@Noodle  He didn't break the NDA.  They didn't have Webassembly at the time, so he only talked about the limitations of a browser based Webassembly.  He was careful with his wording.  

I've read some pretty definitive statements comparing G1000 functionality to the real unit, and to other addons. I've also read definitive statements regarding what the platform is, will, and will not be capable of doing.

It would be reasonable to conclude he's either saying stuff he shouldn't be saying in public, or he doesn't actually know.

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, GlideBy said:

Webassembly is not slow.  I guess you didn't try the link above with the 3D FPS game Doom 3 running Webassembly in a browser.

yes it is "slow" in general it runs at half the speed and uses twice the memory of the compiled code it was built from.

But that is only half the story, the other half is that it can take 1000000us to print "hello world". Most of the time its only a little bit slower, but javascript engines (and lets be 100% clear here, WASM is javascript compiled from another language, nothing more nothing less) do not provide the realtime guarantees you get with actual native code.

If your idea of a high quality aircraft is one where all the instruments freeze randomly for up to a second at a time (and I assume this is something the alpha testers already experience) then your idea of a quality aircraft is very very different to mine. (which is why I thought the js thing was a joke)

Edited April 11, 2020 by mSparks