WebGl support for the Pi

[MisterEd]

Can someone comment on whether there has been any progress on WebGl support for the Pi. Hardware acceleration for WebGl would be a plus for the Pi.

[Gavinmc42]

Pi4 with Buster and Chromium will do WebGL2.0.

[MisterEd]

Pi4 with Buster and Chromium will do WebGL2.0.

That must be why Scratch 3.0 online with Chromium works now.

When I tried Scratch 3.0 online with my Pi 3B+ a few months ago it was so slow it was unusable. I guess I'll try my Pi 3B+ with Buster to see if Scratch 3.0 works any better.

[hippy]

Pi4 with Buster and Chromium will do WebGL2.0.

That must be why Scratch 3.0 online with Chromium works now.

When I tried Scratch 3.0 online with my Pi 3B+ a few months ago it was so slow it was unusable. I guess I'll try my Pi 3B+ with Buster to see if Scratch 3.0 works any better.

It shouldn't. It's not Buster which allows better WebGL but the VideoCore change which came with the Pi 4B, as I posted in your other thread.

[Botspot]

Hardware acceleration for WebGl would be a plus for the Pi.

I am basing this information on my experiences with a Pi 3.

When using Buster, I had to use raspi-config to enable the GL driver. After that, Scratch 3 worked pretty well.
But I have also discovered that FydeOS, essentially chromebook OS for pi, has fully hardware accelerated WebGl and therefore runs Scratch 3 better than Raspbian. But that's Pi 3 performance, and I am sure a Pi 4 will run Scratch 3 fine either way.

[hippy]

When I tried Scratch 3.0 online with my Pi 3B+ a few months ago it was so slow it was unusable. I guess I'll try my Pi 3B+ with Buster to see if Scratch 3.0 works any better.

It shouldn't. It's not Buster which allows better WebGL but the VideoCore change which came with the Pi 4B, as I posted in your other thread.

I might have to take that back. Just re-tried on a 3B (non-plus) and online Scratch 3 is running perfectly and fluidly in Chromium with less than 50% CPU usage.

I could have sworn it was much worse than that when I previously tried with Buster so either I was misremembering or maybe something has changed.

When using Buster, I had to use raspi-config to enable the GL driver. After that, Scratch 3 worked pretty well.

Seems perfectly good for me with the G1 Legacy drivers on my 3B (non-plus) as per above.

In fact, it seems I cannot use anything but that. Even though raspi-config lets me select the Fake or Full KMS, insists I reboot having done so, it seems to have reverted to Legacy when I re-run raspi-config.

That's something for another day to figure out.

[MisterEd]

I created a new card for the Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Buster on it. Still no hardware acceleration in Chromium.

chrome://gpu
* WebGL: Hardware accelerated but at reduced performance
* WebGL2: Unavailable

I checked the Chromium settings. It showed hardware acceleration enabled.
chrome://settings
Advanced
System
Use hardware acceleration when available [Enabled]

I then checked the Chromium flags. Now I found something to change...
chrome://flags
Experiments
Override software rendering list [Disabled]
Change to
Override software rendering list [Enabled]

I tried again...
chrome://gpu
* WebGL: Hardware accelerated
* WebGL2: Hardware accelerated

Note that on the Raspberry Pi 4B by default:
chrome://gpu
* WebGL: Hardware accelerated
* WebGL2: Hardware accelerated

[Gavinmc42]

Wonder how the WebGL2 is done on the 3B+ with the VC4?
I don't remember testing for that because I thought OpenGLES 3.0 was needed for WebGL2.

Need to fire up a 3B+, they have been sitting idle since I got the 4.

[Botspot]

I then checked the Chromium flags. Now I found something to change...
chrome://flags
Experiments
Override software rendering list [Disabled]
Change to
Override software rendering list [Enabled]

I tried again...
chrome://gpu
* WebGL: Hardware accelerated
* WebGL2: Hardware accelerated

There's a problem with this approach... Chromium still isn't hardware accelerated, even though it says it is. See here, and I quote:

Chrome has an option to override the software rendering list (#ignore-gpu-blacklist), but this option does not enable hardware accelerated video decoding. After enabling this option, you may find the following when visiting chrome://gpu: "Video Decode: Hardware accelerated", but this does not mean it actually works.

See a similar topic, short answer is to enable OpenGL via raspi-config. (Pi4 uses OpenGl by default, that's why it works fine out of the box)