Augmented Reality for Web: Latest from BabylonJS
Tags: Babylonjs, JavaScript, 3d, Typescript, Web Rendering

Why BabylonJS?

Simple, fast, and powerful

So, it is not a surprise that the majority of video game developers love this JavaScript library. It incorporates HTML5, WebGL, and Web Audio to power up super functional and fascinating 3D games.

2. Reliable

Over 200 developers contribute to this project each and every day to make the user experience with BabylonJS better and efficient.

They come up with many solutions for possible shortcomings and improve the tool with constant maintenance and updates.

3. Cohesive development of the tools

The current market leader Three.js has a large number of useful libraries, tools, and extensions. However, they are from third parties and whether they are kept up-to-date becomes a question.

Whereas the opposite exists with BabylonJS where all the support is managed centrally within the library itself. The bottom line is that there are alpha, beta, and development cycles in BabylonJS with clear release planning.

4. Microsoft’s support

Thus BabylonJS is born as a side project of two Microsoft engineers, it is backed directly by Microsoft.

If you ever used the cute floating emojis in Microsoft Teams, smooth transition between Microsoft PowerPoint online slideshows, you already experienced the power of BabylonJS.

In the coming years, its likely to have a higher demand for the usage of BabylonJS in 3D game development. For instance, there are five major companies that we can showcase as active users of this framework.

They are Frontend, Hapticmedia, Modsy, wec360, and Thisisablock.

What’s Coming New?

Version 4.2 came out with a whole lot of improvements and functionalities, and here are some features which I found really helpful from the developer's perspective.

1. New Particle Editor

BabylonJS comes with a unique particle system for creating particle effects. With the latest version, it is made far more accessible with the new Particle Editor. Your perfect particle system is just one click away from this version.

And also, for maintaining the Sprite system, there is a brand new Sprite Editor too. So, using a single command, you can create and control a Sprite system.

2. New Skeleton Viewer & Texture Inspector

Are you tired of debugging issues in applications using BabylonJS?

Well, what you need is a simple debugging tool to help you out. That’s why version 4.2 of BabylonJS comes with a new Skeleton Viewer to help you out in debugging.

And there is a newly added Texture Inspector too. Any issue with the texture of a certain piece of your creation, and you can discover all the information relevant to that problem using this Texture Inspector. It can view even single-pixels by its zooming options.

3. Save, reuse, and export custom frames

If you have ever worked with BabylonJS, you may realize the importance of custom frames.

And now, BabylonJS can save and reuse your frames and even export them. I’m pretty sure most of the developers would be delighted to hear that news. And now, there are thousands of lines in a program.

4. Playground Templates

Sometimes there may be code snippets that you reuse from time to time.

The new feature, Playground Templates helps import your most used code snippets with just a ‘CTRL + SPACE.’

Awesome!

And the list of similar features grows with the direct support for .hdr filtering, Babylon React Native, KTX + BasisU support, updated WebXR support, etc.