Lesson 1 >>
[This post has been updated several times since it was originally written, as things have moved on a bit since it was originally published in October 2009... to the best of my knowledge, information is correct as of 17 January 2012.]
The first step in trying out WebGL is to get a browser that supports it. How you do that depends on whether you want to look at cool WebGL demos or develop your own.
Keeping it simple
In general, I recommend that if you want to take a look at cool WebGL demos and aren’t really worried about developing your own, and don’t really care that some of the very latest stuff might not work, then:
- If you’re on Windows, make sure you have the Microsoft DirectX runtime installed — this is a free download from Microsoft.
- Once you’ve done that, make sure that you’ve got the very latest versions of the drivers for your graphics card.
- Next, choose your browser:
- Firefox: just make sure you have version 4 or higher.
- Chrome: all you need to do is install it, or if you’re already using it, just check whether it’s updated itself to version 10 — this will almost certainly have happened automatically (it was released in March 2011), but you can check from the “About Google Chrome” option on the tools menu to confirm.
- Safari: on Macs, OS X 10.7 has WebGL support, but it’s switched off by default. To switch it on, enable the developer menu and check the “Enable WebGL” option. (Thanks to Blah for the heads-up on this one.)
That’s it! You should be good to go. Next, click here to try out some WebGL pages.
Doing it the hard way
If you’re developing WebGL yourself, or if you need the latest features, then nothing beats having the very latest browser. And WebGL is supported in development versions of all of the main browsers apart from Internet Explorer, so all you need to do is get the appropriate version for your machine. How easy this is depends on what kind of computer you have:
- Windows: If you haven’t already done so, make sure you have the DirectX runtime installed — this is a free download from Microsoft. Once you’ve done that, install either Firefox or Chromium, whichever you prefer — if it doesn’t work, check out the troubleshooting guide. (Stop press: a pre-beta version of Opera that supports WebGL on Windows is now available; it’s less stable than the other browsers, though, so don’t rely on it as your only WebGL implementation. It will also only work if your graphics card supports OpenGL 2.0, so it might be a pain to get working.)
- Macintosh: if you’re running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), things should be fine; I recommend that you use the development version of WebKit, which will run as an alternative version of Safari. If you’re running Leopard (OS X 10.5), then you won’t be able to use that version of WebKit, but you can run either Firefox or Chromium. Snow Leopard users can use Firefox or Chromium too, of course. If you’ve got an older version of OS X, unfortunately I don’t know of any WebGL browser you can use right now
- Linux: quite a large number of Linux graphics drivers are, sadly, not good enough to work with WebGL. The same used to be the case under Windows, but the browser makers worked around it using DirectX; unfortunately there’s no such escape route for Linux. Here’s what I’ve managed to gather:
- If you’ve got Nvidia graphics, and recent drivers, then things should work just fine with either Firefox or Chromium.
- If you have ATI graphics, you’re probably best off with Firefox.
- If you have Intel graphics, you’re likely to have to use slow software rendering, which sucks but at least lets you see some WebGL stuff; try Firefox or Chromium, but they probably won’t work with the default (hardware rendering) setup. To use software rendering on Linux, you need to make sure that Mesa is installed (you should just be able to get the latest version using your distro’s package manager) and then you can use the latest Firefox with a few extra settings.
There’s more detail about this in the troubleshooting section below.
Firefox
The “unstable” development release of Firefox is called Minefield. It’s updated every night, and it’s actually pretty solid right now: I’ve not seen it crash recently (and I use it for everything). It can be installed alongside a regular version of Firefox, too, so you don’t need to worry about uninstalling it if you give up on it, or just want to switch back to the regular version for a while.
To get Minefield:
- Go to the nightly builds page and get the appropriate version for your machine. Look out! There might be various versions there, with names like
firefox-10.0a1somethingorfirefox-10.0a2something. You want the most recent, which will be with the highest number after the ‘a’ (alpha) or ‘b’ (beta). - Install it (you’ll need to quit any running Firefox instances while this happens).
- Start Minefield.
A useful tip — if you want to run Minefield side-by-side with the regular Firefox, you can do this by adding the following command-line parameters: -P Minefield -no-remote. The first parameter makes it run with a separate profile (so that you keep separate histories and sets of active tabs in each browser) and the second means that when you start Minefield while Firefox is already running, it won’t just open a new window in the currently-running Firefox. You might also want to add -P default -no-remote to the parameters for your normal Firefox to do the same there too. Windows users: you can set the command-line parameters for each application by right-clicking on the icon you use to launch it, selecting “Properties”, and adding the parameters to the end of the “Target” field. Mac and Linux users — I don’t know how you do it, but you probably know anyway 
Next, click here to try out some WebGL pages.
Running Minefield with Software Rendering on Linux
If your graphics hardware or — more likely — driver doesn’t support OpenGL 2.0, then right now the only way to get WebGL working on Linux is to use a library called Mesa. Mesa basically emulates a graphics card in software, so it’s a bit slow — but it’s better than nothing. It integrates with Minefield, the “unstable” development release of Firefox, and it’s normally part of your Linux distro. Here’s how to get it working.
- Download the latest version of Minefield.
- Install it (you’ll need to quit any running Firefox instances while this happens).
- Using your Linux distro’s package manager, make sure that you have Mesa installed and updated to the latest version.
- Start Minefield.
- Go to the page “about:config”
- Filter for “webgl”
- Switch the value “webgl.enabled_for_all_sites” to “true”.
- Switch the value “webgl.software_rendering” to “true”.
- Set the “webgl.osmesalib” setting to the location of your OSMesa shared library (normally something like
/usr/lib/libOSMesa.so).
Once you’ve done all that, you should be set. Click here to try out some WebGL pages.
Safari
Remember, Safari only supports WebGL on Macs running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6); if you’re on Leopard (10.5), Windows or Linux then you’ll have to use Firefox or Chromium. (If you’re on an older version of OS/X, I don’t know of any browser you can use )
If you are on Snow Leopard, to get it running, you need to:
- Make sure you have at least version 4 of Safari.
- Download and install the WebKit nightly build.
- Start up a Terminal, and in it run this command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitWebGLEnabled -bool YES
- Run the freshly-installed WebKit application.
Next, click here to try out some WebGL pages.
Chromium
The way the Chrome developers currently recommend you get WebGL in Chrome, if you’re doing WebGL development, is to use a nightly build of Chromium, the open source browser on which Chrome is based. The procedure is a little different for each supported operating system; here are instructions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. (A warning — I’ve only tried the Windows version myself, but I’m told the other versions work fine too. Leave a comment below if I’m wrong on that 
For Windows
- Go to the continuous integration page, scroll down to the most recent build (at the bottom), click on the link, and get
chrome-win32.zip - Unzip the file somewhere convenient.
- Inside the unpacked directory, double-click the
chrome.exefile.
For the Macintosh
- Go to the continuous integration page, scroll down to the most recent build (at the bottom), click on the link, and get
chrome-mac.zip - Unzip the file somewhere convenient.
- Open a Terminal window, and go to the
chrome-macdirectory that you unzipped. - Make sure you’re not running Chrome already
- Run the following command:
./Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium
- Once you’ve checked that it works, you might want to automate things a bit so that you don’t have to type the command line every time; in the comments, Julien Limoges has provided a useful shell script to handle that.
For Linux
- Go to the 32-bit or the the 64-bit continuous integration page as appropriatescroll down to the most recent build (at the bottom), click on the link, and get
chrome-linux.zip. - Unzip the file somewhere convenient, and go to the
chrome-linuxdirectory that you unzipped in a terminal window. - Make sure you’re not running Chrome already
- Run the following command:
./chrome
Next, click here to try out some WebGL pages.
Some first examples
Once your browser is installed, you should be able to see WebGL content. Here’s a first sanity check; WebGL Report, which gives details of the WebGL features enabled on your browser. If it tells you that your browser doesn’t support WebGL, check out the troubleshooting guide below.
If it did work, everything should be set up! Unfortunately some recent changes to WebGL broke many of the demos out there, but here are some that have been updated:
- One of my own demos: Bouncing Mandelbrot Cubes.
- From Google: a shiny teapot (click and drag to spin it), “San Angeles“, and for the anatomically-inclined, the Google Body Browser.
- A real-world use of WebGL: ChemDoodle 3D displays molecules in web pages.
- There are more demos in the Khronos demo repository and the User contributions section of the WebGL Wiki. Also, Google’s “Chrome Experiments” site has a WebGL section; most of the demos work in other WebGL browsers too.
- Finally, if you’d like to see the best of WebGL demos every week, subscribe to this blog! Every Thursday I post a round-up of all of the WebGL news I’ve been able to find over the last seven days, and there are normally a bunch of new demos.
That’s it for my first post on getting started with WebGL. If you want to go further and learn about how to create your own WebGL pages, you can check out my first WebGL lesson.
Troubleshooting
Macs
I don’t have any useful hints and tips for getting WebGL running on Macs, because no-one’s ever asked me for help and I don’t think I’ve ever seen questions in the forums. I can only assume that this means that Everything Just Works on OS X…
Windows
The most common problem for Windows users is that you don’t have the DirectX runtime installed — this is a free download from Microsoft, so give it a go. It might also be worth seeing if there are more up-to-date drivers for your graphics card — check out Windows Update, or perhaps the website of your graphics card manufacturer. If that doesn’t work, it might be that your graphics driver is on a “blacklist”. This is rarer under Windows than under Linux, but has been known to happen. See the Linux instructions below for some hints.
Linux
The most common reason for WebGL not working under Linux is problems with graphics drivers. All current Linux browser implementations of WebGL are based on OpenGL, and OpenGL support is something that is provided by your graphics driver. WebGL needs at least OpenGL 2.0 in order to run; in particular, owners of Intel graphics cards have problems because Intel haven’t released drivers for most of their graphics hardware with support for that. If you have Intel graphics, try using Mesa software rendering. If it’s still not working, leave a comment below and I’ll try to help.
If you have ATI or Nvidia graphics, the first thing to do is check the version of OpenGL you have on your machine. To do this, run glxinfo and look for the line headed “OpenGL version string”. If the version number you see is less than 2.0, you’ll need to update your drivers. Check out your computer/graphics card manufacturer’s website, and have a look at distro’s package manager.
If you still can’t get things running, it may be that the browser makers have “blacklisted” your driver; this is because some of them are unstable enough to cause machines to crash, which is understandably not behaviour people want associated with the browser…
In the comments to this post, Nardon gives this update as of 6 October 2011 “Google blacklisted all Linux Drivers, except for the official nVidia Drivers … Firefox 6 and above whitelisted most newer ATI drivers for Linux so you should be able to use WebGL with this browser.”
If you want to risk crashes, and use a blacklisted driver, you can start Chrome with the command-line flag –ignore-gpu-blacklist and see what happens (thanks to Jonas Antunes da Silva for that tip). If it doesn’t fix things, it may just be that a decent Linux OpenGL driver isn’t available for your graphics hardware. Your best bet for now is probably to use software rendering. Once again here are the instructions.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Vladimir Vukićević, Mohamed Mansour, Ehsun Amanolahi, and Chris Marrin for the information that made up this page, and all of its many previous incarnations!
Thanks for the last post, Giles. I found some interesting info about the ANGLE project. I also managed to go through the Firefox procedure – it’s working but the speed is pathetic. However, it’s the age of my computer to blame… I’ll do it for my newer computers and will share some info about the speed.
Yup, software rendering is pretty slow, especially when the page uses textures. The problem’s really that Intel don’t bother to support OpenGL properly in their graphics drivers; I’ve saw something that suggested some of the latest ones might be OK, but anything more than a year or so old seems problematic. Hopefully ANGLE will make it a moot point, anyway.
Hello, thank you for very good lessons!
I am trying to start webgl examples in MineField:
firefox-3.7a5pre.en-US.win32.installer.exe
set this
webgl.enabled_for_all_sites -> true
webgl.osmesalib -> C:\webglmesa751\OSMESA32.dll
webgl.software_render -> true
But still don’t work. In the past it works until now. For example reason i lose my OS. I must reinstall it. When i trying this WEBGL can’t detect OSMESA32.dll. What can i do? Can anybody help me?
Thanks Georgi
Update my drivers and set updates to OS and now it works. Very slowly, but it works
giles thanks for old post that you was made. It was very helpful.
[...] “video dome” –visible avec un navigateur WebGL valide– donne seulement à voir une rue mais produit un effet de téléprésence et de liberté [...]
Hi Georgi, glad you got it working!
Giles
[...] Firefox: WebGL works in the development nightly builds under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Click here for instructions for installing Firefox with WebGL. If you’re on a PC, I recommend using Firefox. * Safari: WebGL is supported by the WebKit core on [...]
WebGL with Minefield works fine (without MESA) but Chrome doesn’t. I’ve tried every tutorial I could find but I always end up with the “Aw, snap!” page or with Chrome crashing completely instead of displaying the WebGL examples. The OpenGL Extensions Viewer is explicitly stating that 2.1 is supported.
So, any advice on this? I have a presentation on WebGL coming up and I probably should have a good explanation why I didn’t manage to get WebGL running on Chrome.
Many thanks in advance!
No idea, sorry! Have you tried searching the Chromium and WebKit bug databases, putting in the model number of your graphics card? That might turn something up.
[...] Lesson 0: Getting started | Learning WebGL (tags: webgl sandbox internal-flash chrome chromium google browser dev beta testing) [...]
Nice WebGL COLLADA viewer:
http://scenejs.org/ide.html?url=http://scenejs.org/library/v0.7/scenes/examples/seymour-plane/seymour-plane.js&title=Distributed%20Content%20-%20COLLADA%20Seymour%20Plane
Hi , I have followed all the steps to set up webgl in firefox for linux system.
in Minefield I made:
webgl.enabled_for_all_sites : True
webgl.osmesalib : /usr/lib/libGL.so
webgl.software_render : True
But I am getting following error while trying sample example:
Canvas 3D: creating PBuffer…
nsGLPbufferOSMESA: gActiveBuffers: 1
Can’t find symbol ‘OSMesaCreateContextExt’
Canvas 3D: creating PBuffer…
nsGLPbufferOSMESA: gActiveBuffers: 2
Canvas 3D: Couldn’t open OSMesa lib — webgl.osmesalib path is incorrect, or not a valid shared library
all this I am trying on ubuntu-9.10.
please help me. Thanks in advance.
thanks for good lessions!
I have set up the environment on Hyper-v machine(windows7)
webgl.enabled_for_all_sites -> true
webgl.osmesalib -> C:\webglmesa751\OSMESA32.dll
webgl.software_render -> true
Works well but slowly!
it’s great i think!
Thanks Georgi
@remi — thanks!
@Karmic Koala — sorry, I’ve no idea — hopefully someone on the Khronos forums (where I see you’ve posted a more detailed version of the question) will be able to help you out. For people coming here in the future via Google, looking for help with the same problem, here’s the forum post: http://www.khronos.org/message_boards/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2695
@aden — you’re welcome! Hyper-V… you mean you’re running WebGL in a virtual machine? That’s extremely cool, in a kind of sick and twisted way
Thanks for this great list of browsers supporting WebGL.
But are you shure i need to use the “chrome-mac” folder on linux?
I suppose this is a copy and paste fault
[...] diesem Blog findet sich auch ein Artikel mit einer Liste der Browser welche momentan WebGL unterstützen, und wo man diese, meist speziellen Vorabversionen, [...]
Oops! You’re quite right, thanks for pointing it out. I’ve fixed it.
hi i have this error when trying to init webgl
Canvas 3D: Couldn’t open OSMesa lib — webgl.osmesalib path is incorrect, or not a valid shared library
config
Os: WIN XP
mem: 2GB
GPU: NVIDIA 8600GT 512MB latest april 2010 driver
i tried both firefox and chrome no demo works
is it from my GPU ? cause it doesnt supports shading language 1.10?
with realtek VR says opengl 2.0 90%
pleas help me
[...] Ein weiteres vorzügliches Feature von WebGL ist die Möglichkeit, Vertex und Fragment Shader nativ zu nutzen. Diese werden allerdings nicht in JavaScript geschrieben. Statt dessen wird wie gewohnt auf OpenGL Shading Language zurück gegriffen. Eine Reihe interessanter Beispiele, für die Überlegenheit von WebGL Shadern, kann man bei Inigo Quilez Shadertoy finden. Aber Achtung: WebGL fähigen Browser nicht vergessen! [...]
Hello,
I tried out your instructions for getting WebGL up on Chrome, Firefox on both 32-bit Win & 32-bit Linux. They don’t seem to work– in each case, when I go to the example pages, I get a dialog box saying “Could not initialize WebGL, sorry “.
Would you have anything to suggest?
–WebGLUser1
@djeradi djibril — what have you set webgl.osmesalib to?
@WebGLUser1 — I can’t think of anything, but you might get something in the Khronos forums. Here’s a thread that was discussing the problems with getting it running on Linux (Ubuntu Karmic), and although there was no solution, you might get help from someone there. http://www.khronos.org/message_boards/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2695
Hi there,
Wow its unbelievable !!
From now on, I am gonna start it !!
Good to find such a great site like this !!
Hi,
I’ve figured out how to painlessly get WebGL running with OSMesa and Firefox nightly under Linux. The steps are on my site (http://www.guciek.net/en/3d) under “OSMesa and WebGL”.
Hope it’s useful for those with Intel cards!
Hey, thanks guciek! I’ll add a link to that to the body of the article so that people can see it easily.
Hi, i have a huge problem with Minefield. Until minutes ago it works correct. After security update 20100518035958 Minefield can NOT display webgl content. It just crash and go down. Even Lesson 1 can’t load. Can you help me?
~giles
Thanks! I like the work you are doing here, we certainly need lots of excitement about WebGL, because we don’t want it to become stiff dead like all the previous attempts to bring 3D to the web
~Georgi
Unpack it again and disable updates?
@guciek — absolutely!
@Georgi — which OS are you on? I’m using Windows, and just downloaded the latest nightly build; it seems to work just fine. Perhaps if you get a fresh copy and try again you’ll be OK?
~ guciek – I reinstall it and stop updates, but i don’t think is’t good idea for night update browser like this
~ giles – Windows XP. I reinstall it without updates and it’s work.
And also are you have any idea when webgl will come into popular browsers like o3d, but without plugins?
when I click
”
” the results of my second WebGL lesson”
I get
” Message from webpage—
Could not initialise WebGL,
sorry
regards
Joachim
~joachim – What browser do you use?
I’m trying to use the latest version of Chromium with Windows 2003, but I can’t open any of the examples.Such as the page:http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson01/index.html,
It shows the window:Could not initialise WebGL, sorry
Is it because my graphics driver doesn’t support OpenGL 2.1,what can I do for it?
@Georgi — I’ve no idea when it’s going to hit the non-development versions of the browsers; I’d be surprised if it was before the end of this year, though.
@Joachim — as Georgi said, which browser are you using? It might also help to know which graphics card and operating system you have.
@Keven — if you’re using the –enable-webgl flag on the command line and it’s still not working, it could well be your graphics card drivers. Have you used a tool like GLView (http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/) to check which version it supports? If it doesn’t support 2.1, you may be able to upgrade the drivers to a newer version — check the manufacturer’s website to see if there’s anything new. However, if you have an Intel graphics card then there might not be a version that supports 2.1. If that’s the case, for now your best bet is to try Minefield with Mesa software rendering.
~giles – Do you think this can happen before the end of 2011?
@Georgi — maybe! I really don’t know enough to give reliable answers. However, if you want some unfounded speculation, here you go…
There are really two questions here:
1. When will the WebGL 1.0 specification be finished?
2. When will some version of WebGL be available in the production version of the browsers?
The first of these seems quite a long way off; there are still lots of discussions of important fundamental points going on on the specification mailing list. I’m not a member of the specification working group (I just read the mailing list), and I don’t have enough experience to be a contributor to those discussions, so I can’t really judge how far away a 1.0 spec is, but my gut instinct is that it’s unlikely to happen this year. I could quite easily be wrong, though. They could wrap it up in three months, or they might take two years…
The other question is more interesting to me; Chrome now has WebGL support in the beta version, not just in nightly builds, and it’s also made its way into Firefox alpha versions. This feels like it’s getting quite close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of “early access” version got into the production versions of the browsers before the specification was finalised, perhaps even before the end of this year. Of course, that might lead to “interesting” backward compatibility problems… But once again, I might be completely wrong here.
So, my guess (based on very little evidence) is that we’ll see pre-1.0 WebGL in the browsers sometime in the not-too-distant future, and then a proper spec (presumably rapidly followed by updated browser support) sometime after that.
I am probably wrong
[Edit] Well, I wasn’t completely wrong: it looks like the production version of Chrome supports WebGL (with the –enable-webgl flag) as of today!
Hi Georgi,
when I test the samples,
”
My browser is firefox-3.7a5pre.en-US.win32, XP,
In my house running, ok.
But in the job, this menssage: –>”Could not initialise WebGL”
in Minefield I made:
webgl.enabled_for_all_sites : True
webgl.osmesalib: C:\DATOS\OSMESA32.dll (ok,I haven’t OPENGL)
webgl.software_render : True
and dom.ipc.plugins.enabled : false (true or false is undifferent)
Reagers!!!
@Fernandel — did you download this version of Minefield recently? And where did you get the OSMESA32.DLL from?
The reason I ask is that older versions of Minefield needed a special build of Mesa, whereas new ones can apparently just use the regular one.
Hello giles!!!
Thank you for answering so fast.
The download version of minifield the past 15 days, but today I returned to download it and install it.
And OSMESA32.DLL the download version here -> “http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/09/21/webgl-samples/”
I also tested Chrome, from the pront (as instructed):
C: \ DATA \ chrome-win32 \ chrome-win32 \ chrome.exe – enable-WebGL
I am not able to get at work at home if. I think it has something to do with the graphics card or permits. (On XP SP2)
Reagers!!!
~giles Thank you for the excellent answer as usual!
~Fernandel I have the same problem in the past. Then I use OpenGL Extensions Viewer 3.20. After that just install all that was not install and it start working.
~Fernandel OS updates too. I don’t know is this important, but you never know.
thanks for your reply.
I’ve been down OpenGL Viewers. But I do not have or imagined drivers installed so you can support the new versions, I have 2004 drivers. As I am at work I can not update anything, it’s a shame.
Anyway do not take a lot more graphics card.
Thank you very much for everything.
Regards
Hi giles,
My laptop X60 could not run the sample:
http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson02/index.html
Here is my configuration:
OS:X60 Intel T7200@2.00GHZ 1.99GB
Browser: Minefield/3.7a5pre
Setting:
webgl.enabled_for_all_sites;true
webgl.osmesalib;D:\webgl-mesa-751\OSMESA32.dll
webgl.software_render;true
MESA: the OSMESA32.dll is downloaded from
http://people.mozilla.com/~vladimir/webgl/webgl-mesa-751.zip
Here is my results:
When I run the sample
” pops.
http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson02/index.html
The error window “Could not initialise WebGL, sorry
When I run
http://learningwebgl.com/tests/cruftcheck20100104.html
Got the following output:
* Checking WebGL… array types vs Canvas… array types: OK (found WebGLFloatArray)
* Checking context name: Failed (couldn’t get using any name I know about)
Any insights about my problem?
@Fernandel, @Alex — sounds like you’ve both got Vlad’s OSMesa build, which uses “mgl_” prefixes for the OpenGL functions, and a new build of Minefield, which requires a build of OSMesa that use “gl_” prefixes.
I’m not sure what the best way to get these is. Perhaps I should build them and host them here? I’ll post something to the WebGL dev list and see if there are any better ideas.
OK, here’s a post I’ve just made on the WebGL forums; I’ll post something on the blog here later on.
[UPDATE] and here’s the blog post.
[UPDATE] The problem is being fixed, Vladimir’s Mesa library is likely to start working again soon.
[...] and tried to set the data. My final outcome was the following (note – you need a WebGL enabled browser to [...]
Hi,
Does WebGL supports Inter Graphics hardware? I have tried it on NVidia graphics card, which is working fine for Firefoxa5 and Chrome nightly build.
But failed to enable same on Intel graphics card (default graphics card that comes with the motherboard ). I have tested on Windows Vista and Windows 7 with latest drivers. Any idea?
Regards
Hi Rahul,
WebGL currently needs your graphics driver to support OpenGL 2.0 or higher; you can use GLView (http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/) to find out which one your driver supports. However, if you’ve got Intel hardware then it probably won’t support 2.0, which means that you either have to wait for Google’s ANGLE project to get integrated into the Windows versions of the browsers (which will make WebGL depend on DirectX rather than OpenGL) — which may take some time — or use software rendering in Firefox/Minefield using the OSMesa library. The problems with using OSMesa are that (a) it’s very slow and (b) it doesn’t work right now due to a recent change in Minefield. (b) will probably be fixed quite soon, however.
Cheers,
Giles
Spore creature viewer works great in the latest chromium build 6.0.424.0 in Ubuntu
Thanks, Bob! I’ve removed “sadly Firefox-only” from the place where I refer to it in the post.
Hi,
i wanted to get webgl going on my old vaio (intel 945gm, opengl 1.4, xp). i downloaded minefield 3.7a5pre and webgl-mesa-751.zip, i set up the three about:config parameters, but all i get is “Could not initialize”.
giles wrote in his comment that the software rendering is currently not working, but my OSMESA.dll is from 19/09/09 and minefield is from 19/06/10. is that related?
i’m confused. what am i missing?
cheers
smindel