What is WebGL?

WebGL 1, WebGL 2 and WebGPU

WebGL 1.0 arrived in 2011 and is based on OpenGL ES 2.0. WebGL 2.0 is based on OpenGL ES 3.0 and has been available in every major browser since Safari added it in 2021. Most product viewers today target WebGL 2 and fall back to WebGL 1 only where they must.

WebGPU is the newer API, with lower overhead and access to compute work on the graphics card. Chrome shipped it in 2023 and other browsers are following. For product pages that need to work on every phone a shopper might own, WebGL is still the safe baseline.

Limits that matter on a product page

Each 3D viewer on a page holds a WebGL context, and browsers cap how many can be live at once (Chrome’s limit is 16). A collection page with a live 3D model on every card will run into it, which is why listing pages use posters and start 3D only on the card the shopper is hovering.

Phones can also take a context away under memory pressure. A well-built viewer listens for that, frees what it can and restores itself instead of leaving a black rectangle.

Graphics memory is mostly textures. A 4096 × 4096 texture uses about 64 MB once decoded on the graphics card, whatever its JPEG size on disk. Halving the resolution cuts that to a quarter.

Questions about WebGL

How do I check whether a browser supports WebGL?

Open get.webgl.org or the browser’s own GPU report (chrome://gpu in Chrome). Practically every browser released in the last decade supports it.

Does WebGL drain the battery?

Rendering continuously does. Good viewers render only when something changes, such as the shopper dragging or a finish loading, and stop when the model is off screen.

Do I need WebGPU for 3D commerce?

Not today. Everything a product viewer, configurator or AR hand-off needs runs on WebGL, and WebGL reaches more devices.