WebGL on Old Hardware

It works on my GMA X3100, so I would assume it runs almost anywhere…but a friend with another laptop that has no graphics card can’t get WebGL to work. I want to help him out.

Does WebGL switch to a software mode when the graphics card is not capable of running all OpenGL effects? How can I find out whether my system is “WebGL capable” (under Windows)?

Sorry if this is a silly question, but has your friend tried using software rendering in Firefox? You need to set webgl.osmesalib to the filename of the MESA library and webgl.softwarerender to true. If your friend’s using Windows, Vlad gave a link to the MESA DLL here: http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/09/21/webgl-samples/

I’ve found that Firefox needs at least OpenGL 2.0 support on the graphics card’s driver, otherwise it will fail over to using MESA if it knows where to find the library. I used GLview : OpenGL Extensions Viewer 6 | realtech VR | realtech VR to find out what version of OpenGL the driver supported, though there may well be better ways.

thank you! that seems to have helped…we will investigate further tomorrow.