Chrome Gets Faster 3D Rendering

The latest build of Google’s Chrome browser has introduced faster 3D graphics and improved textures and visual effects. The new Chrome 56, which has been rolling out since the start of this year, now supports the WebGL 2.0 standard, which is equivalent to OpenGL ES 3 which is used in many mobile games.

“The WebGL JavaScript API exposes hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the web,” the Chromium team says. “Chrome 56 brings support for WebGL 2.0, a major upgrade to the API which unlocks a variety of new graphics features and advanced rendering techniques. WebGL 2.0 is currently available for Chrome users with modern graphics hardware on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is coming soon to Android.”

“In addition to new rendering capabilities, WebGL 2.0 also introduces a substantially expanded conformance test suite with over 340,000 test cases to help ensure that different web browsers offer compatible graphics platforms,” the Chromium blog adds. “Chrome passes 100% of these test cases across multiple GPU vendors on every desktop platform, ensuring that its WebGL 2.0 implementation is stable and consistent.”

While Firefox and Opera have both supported WebGL 2.0 for some time, Chrome has a much larger userbase, so is set to have a more significant impact in many users’ web browsing experience. WebGL 2.0 support for Android versions of Chrome is currently billed by Google as “coming soon.”

“To get started using WebGL 2.0, check out the WebGL 2.0 Samples Pack, which contains small self-contained examples of most new API features,” Google explains. “You can also see WebGL 2.0 in action in After the Flood, an interactive demo by PlayCanvas, created in conjunction with Mozilla. Finally, check back here for more news about future graphics features, such as OpenGL ES 3.1 support and explorations into a lower-level web graphics API supporting the new explicit graphics interfaces like Vulkan, Metal, and DirectX 12.”