Getting a WebGL Implementation

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WebGL is currently under development, and is supported in the latest builds of several browsers. Here are instructions on how to obtain a copy of a browser supporting the provisional WebGL specification. As the specification nears completion, expect that browsers will have this functionality built in to their latest releases, and not require any manual steps to enable it.

Firefox

WebGL is supported in Firefox/4.0b1 http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html and in the nightly builds of Firefox. Visit http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ for builds on Linux (32- and 64-bit), Mac OS X and Windows.

After downloading the browser, enable WebGL: type about:config into the address bar, search for "webgl", and double-click "webgl.enabled_for_all_sites" to set it to true.

The implementation requires working OpenGL 2.1 drivers and the availability of PBuffers.

If OpenGL is not available, or for testing/debugging purposes, software rendering can be used through OSMesa (off-screen Mesa), by setting the "webgl.osmesalib" variable to point to the OSMesa shared library (typically /usr/lib/libOSMesa.so). Note that the OSMesa library is required to use "gl" prefixes, not "mgl".

Safari

WebGL is supported on Mac OS X 10.6 in the WebKit nightly builds available at http://nightly.webkit.org/ .

After downloading and installing the browser, open the Terminal and type the following: 

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitWebGLEnabled -bool YES

This command only needs to be run once. All future invocations of the browser will run with WebGL enabled.


Chrome/Chromium

Chromium is the Open Source project behind the Google Chrome browser, and its continuous builds are currently the best way to get WebGL support in a Chrome-style browser under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. The most recent builds are available here:

Linux/32, Mac and Windows point to the folder containing chrome-linux.zip, chrome-mac.zip, or chrome-win32.zip. For Linux/64, choose the highest numbered folder. Unpack the zip archive.

Chromium must be launched from the command line in order to enable WebGL.

Note that recent versions of chrome appear to require --in-process-webgl to function (tested on Linux and a Windows IBM laptop.) Also, some users have reported that they must close all other versions of Chrome before starting Chromium.

If the following commands do not work for you, remove the --in-process-webgl flag. The latest builds appear to no longer need it.

  • Linux: ./chrome --enable-webgl --in-process-webgl
  • Mac OS X: exec /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --enable-webgl --in-process-webgl
  • Windows: chrome.exe --enable-webgl --in-process-webgl

In addition to the support in Chromium, slightly less frequently updated support for WebGL is now in the Chrome Dev channel, you can install/switch to the Dev Channel using the utility provided at http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

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