Getting WebGL in Chrome at the moment

WebGL is disabled by default in the latest Chrome Beta (9.0.597.45). To get WebGL in Chrome, you need to either:

  1. Run the Chrome Beta with the ‘’–enable-webgl’ flag from the command line:

chrome.exe --enable-webgl

Chrome Beta can be downloaded here: http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta/

  1. Run the Chromium nightly build

Instructions for getting Chromium here: http://khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Getting_a … 2FChromium (Make sure to get the Chromium nightly build, not the Chrome Beta.)

Just running the Chrome Beta is not enough for the time being.

Hopefully this will get fixed soon.

David

Correction: For #2, it’s called the Chromium continuous build, not the nightly build.

Also, for #1, if you see performance problems, it may help to add the flag --enable-accelerated-compositing:

chrome.exe --enable-webgl --enable-accelerated-compositing

Hello.

I am new around here. I tried unsuccesfully the way 1 on an ubuntu 10.04 machine with Google Chrome 9.0.597.45 beta.
There the chrome.exe does not exist, but there is a file called google-chrome, when I launch

./google-chrome --enable-webgl

the browser starts ok but when I try to go to bodybrowser.googlelabs.com it doesn’t work and tells me I need a Web browser that supports WebGL.

I see this in the terminal where I launched the command:

madrid@max60:/opt/google/chrome$ ./google-chrome --enable-webgl 
[3644:3644:876802284:ERROR:base/native_library_linux.cc(32)] dlopen failed when trying to open libGLESv2.so: libGLESv2.so: no se puede abrír el archivo de objeto compartido: No existe el archivo o directorio
[3644:3644:876807776:ERROR:app/gfx/gl/gl_context_linux.cc(539)] glXChooseFBConfig failed.
[3644:3644:876821471:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[3644:3644:876821498:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1806)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[3644:3644:876822251:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.
[3644:3644:876822959:ERROR:app/gfx/gl/gl_context_linux.cc(539)] glXChooseFBConfig failed.
[3644:3644:876825871:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[3644:3644:876825896:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1806)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[3644:3644:876826599:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.

Any idea? Thanks in advance.

The link Try New Features with Google Chrome Beta - Google Chrome cannot be reached with either Google Chrome 8.0.552.224 beta or Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385.

Firefox is able to reach the page :mrgreen:

It sounds like the reason you can’t get Chrome to support WebGL may be to do with your underlying OpenGL implementation. What graphics card do you have? Can you run other OpenGL applications OK?

I would like to try Google body on my intel mac os 10.6
I downloaded Google Chrome beta and navigated to /Applications/Google Chrome/Contents/MacOS

there is no executable file named chrome
the executable is named Google Chrome
If I change the name of the file to Google-Chrome it does not launch Chrome
When I type ./Google Chrome --enable-webgl in the terminal window the space character in Google Chrome terminates the string so
I tried ./.“Google Chrome” --enable-webgl
./“Google Chrome --enable-webgl”
and ./Google%20Chrome --enable-webgl
none of these work

The easiest way to get it working is by installing Chrome from dev channel. Just keep in mind that these are development builds and sometimes they can have some strange bugs. Check this page: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org … ev-channel for install instructions

I’ve been seeing lots of problems with both Chrome and Safari on the Mac. Since they are both based on the same “WebKit” display routines, they tend to share the same kinds of bugs.

If you have problems with Chrome, I recommend downloading a copy of Firefox 4 (beta) and trying with that.

WebGL is still a “work in progress” and significant bugs still pop up from time to time.

For example, over the last few days, both Chrome and Safari have been killing off shaders that have any single or double quote characters in their comments(!) - since companies like Google tend to stamp gigantic copyright/legal notices on their shaders, often containing things like:

// This software is provided on an “as is” basis…

…which is exactly the kind of thing that Safari and Chrome were having trouble with. That bug got fixed today…but maybe you don’t have the fix yet.

So right now, if something fails in one browser, it’s worth trying a different one.

However, these pieces of software are getting stronger and stronger every day - bugs like this are becoming more and more rare.

– Steve

Thanks for the answers and excuse my delay in answering.

I still haven’t been able to have bodybrowser working in linux (ubuntu 10.04 64bit) in my PC (it works ok in my windows XP partition with chromium but it fails in my windows 7 virtual machine in the ubuntu host).

My video card is “RV410 [Radeon X700 (PCIE)]”.

I have never tried other webgl applications.

I downloaded the latest chrominium release, but when I try the Body Browser I get this:


[4398:4398:7178434377:ERROR:gl_context_linux.cc(558)] glXChooseFBConfig failed.
[4398:4398:7178455655:ERROR:context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[4398:4398:7178455683:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1807)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178456391:ERROR:gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178456951:ERROR:gl_context_linux.cc(558)] glXChooseFBConfig failed.
[4398:4398:7178460064:ERROR:context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[4398:4398:7178460087:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1807)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178460791:ERROR:gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178465314:ERROR:context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[4398:4398:7178465338:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1807)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178469156:ERROR:gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178469702:ERROR:gl_context_linux.cc(558)] glXChooseFBConfig failed.
[4398:4398:7178472997:ERROR:context_group.cc(73)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units supported.
[4398:4398:7178473020:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(1807)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.
[4398:4398:7178474196:ERROR:gpu_processor.cc(78)] GPUProcessor::InitializeCommon failed because decoder failed to initialize.