Does Chrome include ANGLE for WebGL?

I would like to try out WebGL on a laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, WinXP/32, DirectX 9.0c.

Some time ago I have gotten it to work with Firefox and software rendering.

However, I heard about ANGLE and that some versions of Chrome support it. So I installed Chrome 11, canary build. Does that support ANGLE? Do I somehow need to activate it?

Because, all WebGL pages that I tried with canary build say something like: "Failed to initialize WebGL"

feklee

Posted 2011-02-17T17:50:55.293

Reputation: 1 194

are you refering to http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/ ?

– akira – 2011-02-17T18:17:08.700

Yes, and I only need very basic WebGL support. – feklee – 2011-02-17T18:22:07.340

ATI ship their own OpenGL drivers, why do you need a layer between OpenGL and DirectX? – akira – 2011-02-17T18:30:26.903

Because WebGL needs OpenGL ES 2.0, which the drivers for the Mobility Radeon 9000 doesn't provide. – feklee – 2011-02-17T19:18:24.780

I would also like to have some information about ANGLE and if it is already really used by chrome and/or firefox... if someone knows, please share some information (more than the from the project page) – WarrenFaith – 2011-02-18T17:27:10.023

Answers

Firefox uses ANGLE by default. This is at least true on my Windows 7 machine, I had to explicitly disable ANGLE to use native rendering.

You can see what drivers you are using via about:support. In my case, as I am using native rendering, the drivers are the following: NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce 210/PCI/SSE2 -- 3.3.0. Were it using ANGLE, it would state that instead.

You can change this by going to about:config and toggling webgl.prefer-native-gl to true.

Note: I'm using Firefox 5 on the Aurora branch, so all of this might not be accurate on Fx 4. That said, I've cross-referenced the ANGLE stuff against the documentation over at https://developer.mozilla.org and it seems accurate.

Rushyo

Posted 2011-02-17T17:50:55.293

Reputation: 249

Bug 996266 removed webgl.prefer-native-gl, now it's webgl.disable-angle. – Oriol – 2015-08-17T22:35:28.933

Thanks for the info - very valuable! Just tried WebGL with Firefox 4 in safe mode, and it does not work. A simple example page reports: "Could not initialise WebGL, sorry :-(" Have not tried the page with Firefox 5.

– feklee – 2011-04-18T19:36:28.523

What does about:support report under 'WebGL Renderer'? – Rushyo – 2011-04-19T09:36:24.213

It reports: (WebGL unavailable). The same with the following options set to true: webgl.enabled_for_all_sites (deprecated anyway), webgl.force-enabled – feklee – 2011-04-19T20:39:00.563

This is the same with webgl.prefer-native-gl set to false as well? There's also webgl.disabled and webgl.force_osmesa to consider. These should both be false. – Rushyo – 2011-04-20T10:38:03.613

webgl.prefer-native-gl, webgl.disabled, and webgl.force_osmesa are all set to false (default). – feklee – 2011-04-20T21:50:43.503

Could you PM me a DxDiag dump? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190900

– Rushyo – 2011-04-21T06:20:33.323

There is no PM system in Super User. So I just sent you a message via your Google profile. – feklee – 2011-04-22T08:04:35.550

Good call. I've had a quick look through (at work, can't toothcomb it yet) and I note you're running a debug copy of Dx9. I know from personal experience experience this doesn't work with WebGL. The only way I know how to change that is via the DirectX SDK! Also your ATI drivers seem to be old. I can find references from years ago, I'd recommend updating that if your chipset allows it. In addition, if you could send me a copy of the dxdiag report after running a test, that would provide additional information. – Rushyo – 2011-04-26T10:19:48.013

Thanks for looking into it! Indeed I noticed that I have d3d9d.dll installed, but also there is a file d3d9.dll - so I assumed things to be fine. Just read though, that a reinstall of DirectX may be appropriate. I plan to do that soon. Concerning the ATI drivers: As I wrote in another comment yesterday, AFAIK there are no newer ones. – feklee – 2011-04-26T20:25:17.330

I now removed the DirectX9 debug version, and - using Mobility Modder.net - I installed the latest official ATI drivers for the Mobility Radeon 9000 (driver package v8.252.0.0 including Catalyst v06.11, display drivers v6.14). AFAIK there is nothing newer. Still no success with Firefox 4. So, I will send you another message with a new DxDiag dump. Thanks again! – feklee – 2011-05-01T15:11:51.830

I've been using webgl on chrome dev on xp for a couple of months. All of a sudden it's not working. My digging led to http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=72975 . Seems like it's now turned off by default for win xp. I can confirm xp crashes with webgl, ff4 does too. Shame

Colin Chambers

Posted 2011-02-17T17:50:55.293

Reputation: 21

1Thanks Colin, for digging that up! Many useful information there, though nothing about ANGLE. I tried the "--ignore-gpu-blacklist" Chrome command line switch in stable and in canary build, but to no avail. – feklee – 2011-03-17T12:10:57.550

I don't know for Firefox, but someone noticed (using GLIntercept) that Chrome was using DirectX on his computer to display WebGL contents, however I'm not sure if it's really Angle or an internal Google equivalent:

http://bbs.demoscene.fr/code/webgl-64k-contest/msg5526/#msg5526

He doesn't mention having to activate anything, so I think it's an automatic fallback.

wildpeaks

Posted 2011-02-17T17:50:55.293

Reputation: 111

Fact is that WebGL does not work with Chrome and Chrome canary build on my system. Yet according to dxdiag.exe Direct3D 7, 8, and 9 work fine on my system. When visiting some simple WebGL test, for example, then Chrome canary build displays a popup window: "Unable to initialize WebGL. Your browser may not support it."

– feklee – 2011-02-28T23:17:07.483

Just discovered that there is updated information. Comment 28 to the aforementioned issue says: "GPU acceleration is no longer disabled on Windows XP in Chrome 11: it will run on up-to-date drivers." Still doesn't work for me, perhaps because of old drivers. Unfortunately I am already running the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 driver version 6.14, which is the latest AFAIK.

– feklee – 2011-04-25T15:20:42.933

By the way, some gamers have reported downgrading to version 6.5 as a solution to fix issues with 3D acceleration. However, on my system dxdiag.exe reports that DirectX 9.0c works fine, and I can see the rotating cube.

– feklee – 2011-04-25T15:21:58.190