All sorts of industries use web tech to render UIs. Even SpaceX used it in Dragon. People just have preconceptions and biases, and gamers are horrendously intolerant of everything and anything that doesn’t fit their world view of “how things should be”.
> All sorts of industries use web tech to render UIs. Even SpaceX used it in Dragon.
When I realized this was performant enough to drive a 747's entire cockpit while the simulator moved along at a high FPS and with incredible visuals, and was now a thing that was being selected for "state of the art" AAA games ... from there I did my homework.
So that led to reading all about SpaceX Dragon UI, as you mention, and all the myraid of other places this is used.
I did feel like I was too far outside the loop, having been a software engineer and working with these technologies for quite a while by that point. "quite a while" being the pre-JavaScript-existing years.
I just wasn't working on projects that such a thing would meet a requirement.
Now? I still have no use for it but I find it incredible that everything in this entire pipeline has become so optimized and reliable. Apparently to the point you can suggest running a spacecraft's user interface and not leave everyone staring at you, blank-faced and not sure how to respond.
Instead, possible responses can now include "sounds good".
Yeah, It's still not game engine ready (maybe wasm can convince me), but JS isn't that bad as far as interpreted languages go. If you can maticulously control package dependency you can get fine enough performance. It's only rendering a flat page at the end of the day, after all.
