webGL availability

[prvi_treti]

Hello there,

  Few days ago I had asked at GD.net (as it is more oriented at classical gaming) about headless software renderer for server side rendering to use as canvas fallback. But majority responded with webGL is being widely available so such effort not worthing trouble.

  So checked again and webGL browser support seems fine (beside IE 11 vs IE 9 for canvas ) but webglstats.com's up to 93% coverage didn't seem realistic to me. Even though it's rather true also hardware capability is a matter of debate.

   What is your experience/opinion/observation about webGL support? Is it wide enough to discard canvas fallback and go all webGL?

Thanks in advance.

 

[tips4design]

Well, what device do you own that doesn't support WebGL?

[prvi_treti]

Only device having problem with webGL is Lumia 920 but doubt this question is relevant.

[themoonrat]

It all depends on what devices / browsers your customer is asking you to support. If you know your device list it's easier to make the call.

For what I do, which is making games to be played in the browsers of mobile devices, canvas support is still required IMO. Older IE usage is significant enough that customers would prefer us to support them, players on older Galaxy devices just use the internet button so aren't running a modern Chrome, and Chrome itself has a blacklist of devices / graphical driver versions which it deems are buggy and cause too many issues when WebGL is used, even though theoretically they're capable.

But the time to drop it is close. A year, maybe 2 max.