Google Chromium Native Client to Improve Performance of Browser-Based Games

Tweet

Running high-end video games usually requires high-end hardware, which provide adequate acceleration to ensure smooth gameplay. But a recent effort by Google promises wider game availability with multi-platform browser-based gameplay through Native Client.

Google has announced that Native Client is now ready to support wide release of games and applications. Recall how the company has planned to rebuild its browser technology to be more secure, and to better harness the capabilities of different computing platforms and processing architectures. In a recent event at Google, the company has brought together app and game developers to announce a big push toward browser-based gaming through Native Client, which will bring console-like game quality to the web browser.

Web browsers have historically been too weak to adequately run games design for console systems, such as the Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation 3. But “Google’s native client solves this problem,” says Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, who lauds the technology as “an excellent solution for browser gaming.” Developers like Square Enix and Unity, among others, have expressed support for NaCl, and are already starting to port their games to NaCl. Unity, for one, is including built-in support for NaCl in its Unity 3D gaming engine. Xbox Live game Bastion (pictured above) has likewise launched on Google Chrome.

NaCl takes better advantage of a computer’s processing and graphics capabilities at the low-level to achieve performance up to 10 times compared with other browsers. As such, developers will have an easier time building apps and games for Chrome. In fact, the Unity 3D game engine only requires ticking off a checkbox in order to make a game compatible with Chrome. With NaCl, developers don’t have to rewrite code in order to run their apps on the Web browser, since Chrome will run apps in a secure and portable environment without performance losses.

NaCl currently runs hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, full-screen mode, dynamic loading, sandboxed local storage, and mouse capture. Google is currently working on interfacing NaCl with HTML5, to produce richer experiences with web-based apps. Soon enough, Google and developers will be able to release browser-based applications and games that look and feel like you’re playing them on a console gaming system or as a locally-run program. There is also promise that mobile apps and games will likewise support these multi-platform apps with performance at par with their desktop counterparts.