Scene loading speed

Hello, hello! Здравствуйте! (I admit it, I cut-and-pasted that from a phrase website! ) The artist got curious about the tech side of things again!

Having figured out how to set up a B4W app that works like a simple viewer, I'd got the idea to compare loading speed of a larger file between B4W and Sketchfab. Sometimes it seems the Sketchfab loads faster, but I can't be sure - maybe it's just an issue of fluctuating connection speed.

Still, it never hurts to ask - is there something going on "under the hood" over at that site that lets stuff load faster? Or is this a byproduct of the fact that B4W is designed to do much more?

Also, aside from reducing file size, is there anything that can be done to speed up loading? Thanks!

Hello!

We also made a small experiment on uploading identical heavy scenes to our engine and to sketchfab. Really, their loading is faster. There are several reasons for this. The main thing you'll notice while pushing your file to Sketchfab servers is a long (several minutes) processing before you can navigate the scene. I don't know what exactly is being perform on this stage, but I assume, there is a serious preparation of geometry, shaders, textures, etc. So, almost everything that Blend4Web does "on the fly" is being processed before the actual scene loading. This gives you better loading times but the scene cannot be changed in any way in runtime.

That's a good approach for the viewer (which sketchfab is), but not for the full-functional engine which tends to give as much flexibility to the user as possible.

Furthermore, they use some good compression of binary data. We are also looking forward to implement it. And currently, we are making a huge refactoring which will among other benefits give us a faster objects processing during scene loading. So in this or in the next month Blend4Web should receive a speedup in this field. Summarizing, generally, your suggestion about "designed to do much more" is right.

While skimming threads (mostly still lurking at this point), the Sketchfab reference caught my eye. I have a good bit of content there, some of it with NPOT textures, that I hope to move. To what extent, if any, do those impact load time? It would save a good bit of migration work not to have to deal with it.

While skimming threads (mostly still lurking at this point), the Sketchfab reference caught my eye. I have a good bit of content there, some of it with NPOT textures, that I hope to move. To what extent, if any, do those impact load time? It would save a good bit of migration work not to have to deal with it.

They have absolutely no influence on loading time
We give a warning on NPOT-textures usage only because they don't have full WebGL support. For example, you can't tile them.

Ответ на сообщение пользователя Evgeny Rodygin
They have absolutely no influence on loading time
We give a warning on NPOT-textures usage only because they don't have full WebGL support. For example, you can't tile them.

Good to know. You've also reminded me that it's time to start a thread for (what appear to be) undocumented error messages.

Fantastic!

As much fun as I've had working with B4W, the development team's diligence, enthusiasm and good cheer have made it all that much better! You're an awesome bunch, and I thank you and send you lots of good wishes for ongoing success!

Hi, gentlemen,

I checked the performance for several examples in firefox. In the main.js we can see many performance.now(), which can be found in b4w in the end. It can cost some time.
So to reduce client's side overhead, I would consider detecting the client on the sever and then send the tailored b4w. Osg is class based, I honestly don't believe it can be faster. Maybe just I am aged

aesop.lee, thanks for suggestion! We will surely look to improve loading speed.

Hello everyone. Once again, great forum posts. Blend4web team is very fast and very friendly. It's a pleasure to receive their response :)

This post makes great explanation the difference between b4w and Sketchfab.

Regarding loading time, this page says loading time should be faster with .json files than with .html files.

This might help, when comparing to Sketchfab.

Could somebody post the same scene here in both .html and .json to view the speed difference?

Thanks!