Even though Vulkan for would be of little gain for the web due to all the security considerations required, a WebGL backend should still be able to benefit from being built on Vulkan instead.
Due to the refinement of the pipeline and memory access, etc. provided by Vulkan, there's a lot of room for optimization.
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Though on the other hand, even with additional overhead on a Vulkan web API, the improved state management and access to command buffers may still allow for smarter rendering with negligible overhead via JS
I completely agree and one could theoretically do away with things like ANGLE! Though, I also suspect that the implementor's overhead is rather large in contrast to the current way WebGL is implemented in Chrome and FF, which is currently a relatively 'thin' layer on top of OpenGL.
On the other hand the nature of implementation in Chrome, i.e. does seem to lend itself somewhat to a command buffer approach as in Vulkan.
Due to the refinement of the pipeline and memory access, etc. provided by Vulkan, there's a lot of room for optimization.
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Though on the other hand, even with additional overhead on a Vulkan web API, the improved state management and access to command buffers may still allow for smarter rendering with negligible overhead via JS
Fun times