PlayCanvas or babylon.js for html5 fps

[The_dude8080]

Hey. What do you think is the best option ? I know there won't be probably a "best" option but what would you guys choose? Babylon seems more complex than playcanvas but that might bring some more advantages to the table as well idk...

[lihis]

Hello.

Well, i think that choosing whatever option is better than thinking about what option is the best option. You know. Just pick something, start doing some shit and see where it goes. It's just javascript. You will most likely come up with your own functions and logic anyways and once you've done that it's probably little problem to switch to another engine.

Greets,

a Babylon user

[The_dude8080]

7 hours ago, lihis said:

Hello.

Well, i think that choosing whatever option is better than thinking about what option is the best option. You know. Just pick something, start doing some shit and see where it goes. It's just javascript. You will most likely come up with your own functions and logic anyways and once you've done that it's probably little problem to switch to another engine.

Greets,

a Babylon user

I agree with you. Just wanted some feedback

[willeastcott]

I think the runtimes of PlayCanvas and Babylon are broadly similar. Sure, there are some differences here and there, but they do similar stuff. The main difference though are the tools you get with PlayCanvas. The Editor is a seriously powerful environment to rapidly build WebGL apps/games. It's probably the closest thing in the WebGL world that compares to Unity (but as we all know, Unity's WebGL performance is not good and isn't supported on mobile).

Here's the published app of the above scene:

https://playcanv.as/p/yipplmVO/

So PlayCanvas is right at home with FPS style environments. Interesting things to note about this particular app:

• It uses something called 'Asset Variants'. This is essentially a built-in engine feature which checks what texture compression formats are supported by the client and loads the most optimal format from the server. So PVR on iOS, ETC1 on Android and DXT on Windows, typically.
• It uses runtime generated lightmaps. In other words, lightmaps are not baked in a tool like Max/Maya/Blender. Instead, they are baked when the app has loaded. This means that you don't have to download the lightmap data, which can be quite a saving.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think (I work on PlayCanvas myself!).

 

[end3r]

It depends on what you'd like to achieve, but as mentioned already they are quite similar.

You can see a comparison of a very basic 3D scene created in PlayCanvas engine and the same built in Babylon.js and see for yourself which style suits you better. Bonus points for PlayCanvas having an online editor in which you can build the exact same demo, but without coding.

[willeastcott]

Cool tutorial page @end3r. Would be great to update it to the current scripting system's boilerplate code, which is:

var BoxAnimation = pc.createScript('boxAnimation');

// initialize code called once per entity
BoxAnimation.prototype.initialize = function() {
    
};

// update code called every frame
BoxAnimation.prototype.update = function(dt) {
    
};

 

[end3r]

3 minutes ago, willeastcott said:

Would be great to update it to the current scripting system's boilerplate code

Will do, thanks for the info!

[The_dude8080]

Well, thank you all for the help!