Canvas 3D: can't get a native PBuffer... (firefox-3.7a6)

Friend told me Firefox WebGL had improved, so I retried and get this for everything WebGL (e.g. particles demo):

This demo requires a WebGL-enabled browser.

In Error log console:
Canvas 3D: creating PBuffer...
Canvas 3D: can't get a native PBuffer, trying OSMesa...
Canvas 3D: can't create a OSMesa pseudo-PBuffer.

However, retrying firefox-3.7a2, most WebGL demos come up. However, firefox-3.7a5 is broke too (same as 3.7a6).

Am I doing something wrong? Or are recent Firefox WebGL’s just broken?

And if the former, how do I debug this? Thanks.

(Sys info: webgl.enabled_for_all_sites = true. glxinfo, glxgears, and my GL apps work fine. NVidia GTX285 with 195.36.07.04 drivers. OpenSuSE 11.2 64-bit Linux.)

[b]here[/b] is some info about it -aslo just recommends older builds.

Personally I use chromium (in linux and mac) - where you can also debug the page via the ´developer tools´.

That was the ticket. Thanks!

Personally I use chromium (in linux and mac) - where you can also debug the page via the ´developer tools´.

Even with 3.7a5 (5/11/10) only some demos work, so I’ll flip over and give Chromium a shot.

Very nice! Chromium WebGL is smooth (unlike Firefox 3.7a5 5/11/10) and all the demos work (also unlike Firefox). Hope Firefox WebGL improves before release as I and everyone I know are hooked on it.

That’s interesting – I think Krzysztof Pasek was recommending older builds of Firefox specifically because they work with Mesa software rendering on Linux, so that shouldn’t matter for you.

I’m using the Firefox nightly builds, and everything works fine for me. Chromium is a bit faster, though.

It really looks like the older Firefox builds that work are using the NVidia driver not Mesa. lsof reveals that libGL.so.<nvidia_version> is linked into the firefox-bin executable. Also, I don’t see any of the OSMESA-related things mentioned here in the logs – just creating PBuffer… That said I don’t “really” know what’s going on under-the-hood.

Hmm, it sounds like a bugfix for a Minefield problem with 64-bit Linux has just landed: http://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/archives/1006/msg00124.html. It might be worth trying tonight’s nightly build.

Fetched the 6/17 3.7a6 snap from here, and I can confirm that a few of the WebGL Wiki Demos work now (so some improvement), but most still do not.

Those that do work are a less jerky, but still update rate is pretty low – nothing like under Chromium which is as smooth as glass. That said, Chromium WebGL animation pegs a CPU core (which is fine with me) whereas Firefox 3.7a6 6/17 does not.

Thanks for passing that on – I’ve just been updating my “Getting started” page, and I’ve added a note that right now Chromium looks best for 64-bit Linux.