`winit::TabLeft`/`Event::Suspended` doesn't function as intended on WASM

[nuzzles]

Bevy version

0.13

What went wrong

JavaScript is an interpreted language, and the browser will essentially suspend code execution completely if the tab is hidden. Bevy's systems are tied to requestAnimationFrame, which is also completely paused when the user is tabbed away from the window.

In other words: On wasm, the main thread gets suspended when it is hidden (e.g. when the user switches tabs). This means that the app.update() function will not be called, because bevy's scheduler only runs app.update() when the browser's requestAnimationFrame is called (and that happens only when the tab is visible).

What problem does this cause?

• No systems will execute whilst the tab is inactive. This means networking crates will disconnect easily (no communications being sent while alt-tabbed).
• Networking crates that don't disconnect may experience buffer overflows for bounded protocols, as they will process hundreds of missed packets all at once. This could result in dropped packets.

There's a very long discussion on how this problem affects lightyear available here. We eventually come to a solution, which I'll propose below.

The part about winit::TabLeft

So yeah, there is technically events like Event::Suspended in winit that are supposed to fire when the tab gets left. However, as aforementioned, no code executes when the tab is hidden. As a result, this event is handled only when you return to the tab!

< user leaves tab >

... 30 seconds

< user goes back to the tab >

--> new event: Event::Suspended
--> new event: Event::Resumed

And what use is that? It's delivering no value currently. I'd call this a bug.

The solution

A solution, credited to @Nul-led , is to add a very small plugin (~10 lines of code) to spawn a web worker which sends a message every 1 second (configurable time). A callback is added to the web browser's DOM events to execute the main schedule exactly 1 time.

The code can be seen here: https://github.com/cBournhonesque/lightyear/pull/371/files#diff-5ec95d0ed493b4b63bba9ae693c990e6e1612d2fbe6309df678bf21fb75fbc1b

What I want

Selfishly, I want to see this in bevy. It's a very small amount of code but could be massively beneficial to many crates who want to keep a continuous run in the background when the tab is inactive.

Specifically, I think this should be a

pub struct WebExecutionPlugin {
    callback_ms: f32 // default = 250.0 ms
}

that can be added to any application.

Furthermore, it would be nice to have a

#[derive(States)]
pub enum WindowFocusState {
    Inactive,
    Active,
}

that changes, depending on whether the window or tab is visible.

[Nul-led]

Im not really sure if this should be part of bevy to be honest. The solution mentioned uses the fact that web workers aren't throttled by major browsers (unlike timers in content scripts), however this is (as far as im aware) not standardized and up to the browser for implementation. So it is essentially a temporary fix not a solution as browsers could very well change this behavior at any point. Which leads me to believe that it is not a good idea to rely on this in bevy.

However it might be a good idea to run app.update() whenever the browser fires an visibilitychange event.

Additionally my solution relies on unsafe casting and will only work in a single threaded environment so it isn't entirely future proof in that aspect either (see multithreading proposal for WebAssembly).

Tldr;
I believe this should be implemented in an independent crate or at least with an optional feature.

[Nul-led]

Published https://crates.io/crates/bevy_web_keepalive if someone needs a solution until this is fixed upstream (if this gets fixed at all)

[Nul-led]

tho @happydpc this might not work for you as this only runs the Main schedule, so the renderer subapp wouldn't be affected.

[nuzzles]

Yeah my issues are fixed with that plugin