WebGL1 not working in SciChart v5+ (worked in v3) – required for legacy hardware

Hello Júlio,

Thank you for reaching out. We understand how frustrating it can be to run into hard technical limitations caused by legacy hardware, especially when upgrading is not an option, and we appreciate the time and effort you have put into testing and documenting the behaviour you are seeing.

Yes, that is correct. SciChart.js v5 supports WebGL2 but does not support WebGL1. Earlier versions of SciChart.js, specifically v4 and v3, do include a WebGL1 fallback.

During the development of SciChart.js v5, we identified that a number of the WebGL1 code paths introduced in v4 were partially broken or not functioning correctly. The reason for this is we actually couldn’t find hardware that was only WebGL 1 enabled to properly test it! In other words, these devices are so old and obsolete they have become practically unavailable…

WebGL1 issues are not present in v3, and during the period since we released SciChart.js v4 we did not receive any bug reports related to WebGL1 usage.

As part of our planning for v5, we conducted a broad customer survey last year and received hundreds of responses across different industries and deployment types. Based on those responses, we did not identify any active production deployments relying on WebGL1 only browsers or hardware. This feedback informed our decision to remove WebGL1 support and fully commit to WebGL2 & future web-based technologies such as WebGPU in order to enable current and future browser based visualisation capabilities that are not feasible with WebGL1.

WebGL2 now has very broad browser support. Public compatibility data available at
https://caniuse.com/?search=webgl2
shows support across all major desktop and mobile browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Safari iOS, Chrome for Android, Samsung Internet, Opera Mobile, and Android browsers, with support dating back to approximately 2017.

From a hardware perspective, WebGL2 requires support for GLSL ES 3.0. GPUs capable of this date back almost 20 years and include any GPU supporting Shader Model 3. Even modern single board computers such as Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 support Shader Model 3 and are capable of running SciChart.js v5 with WebGL2.

In some environments where WebGL2 appears unavailable, this can sometimes be resolved without hardware changes. For example, Chrome supports SwiftShader, which provides a software emulated WebGL2 pipeline. We have also noticed that some Chromium based browsers shipped with Linux do not enable WebGL out of the box, but this can often be addressed through applying the correct patches and updates to the OS.

Question for you: What hardware, OS and browser are you running on?

Let us know the hardware, browser, and operating system you are using, and maybe we can point you in the right direction.

Hello,

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

To answer your question, I am currently running the following environment:

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 (Sandy Bridge)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 2000 (integrated)
RAM: 8 GB
Operating System: Windows 10
Browser: Google Chrome version 144

In this setup, WebGL is available, but WebGL2 is not exposed by the browser. Based on my investigation, this appears to be a hardware limitation of the Intel HD Graphics 2000, which does not support GLSL ES 3.0 and therefore cannot provide native WebGL2 support, regardless of browser or OS version.

This explains why SciChart.js v3 works correctly (WebGL1), while v5 fails to initialize due to the WebGL2-only requirement. I have tested this consistently and can confirm the behavior.

While I understand and respect the decision to move fully to WebGL2 and future technologies, this environment represents a real legacy deployment where upgrading hardware is not currently an option.

Please let me know if there is any supported workaround (even experimental or software-based), or if maintaining v3 is the only viable path for this type of hardware.

Best regards,
Júlio

Hi Julio,

According to the web Intel HD 2000 series supports shader model 4.1, but only DirectX 10 on Windows. The latest versions of Google Chrome on Windows use ANGLE as a renderer which requires D3D11 feature set on the GPU to support WebGL 2 on Windows. These GPUs started appearing on the market about 15 years ago.

One workaround you can do now. You can force google chrome to run using SwiftShader for emulation of WebGL 2.

chrome.exe –use-gl=angle –use-angle=swiftshader

or in later versions of chrome

chrome.exe –use-gl=angle –use-angle=swiftshader-webgl –enable-unsafe-swiftshader

Another workaround is to use a much older version of Chrome. For example, the requirement by Google Chrome to have D3D11 support was introduced a while back, older version(s) of Chrome may run (but you’d have to go very old: ~Chrome 75-90 ..)

The Intel HD 2000 – sadly – is a 15 year old hardware which was last supported 10 years ago. So the options may be limited.

For us to include WebGL1 again in SciChart.js v5+ is possible if the commercial demand is there, but as I mentioned before, we couldn’t find the hardware to test on reliably / GPUs that support WebGL 2 started appearing around 15 years ago.