Virtual Shape Research

This page tries to answer the most common questions about "VSR WebGL Export" and WebGL. Please note that this information may become obsolete soon, as the development of Web browsers moves on quickly.


To check whether your current browser supports WebGL, you can visit http://get.webgl.org.
Should you have any further questions, please send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

How to use the "VSR WebGL Export" plug-in?

A demonstration video of how to use the WebGL Export plug-in can be found here. 

What is WebGL?

WebGL is a Web standard for 3D graphics, which can be directly interpreted by Web browsers. It allows you to create 3D data that can be viewed, rotated and zoomed directly in the Web browser, without the need to install an additional program. A more technical description for developers can be found here.

Which browsers support WebGL?

Please be aware that you need to have JavaScript enabled to use WebGL in a browser. The following browsers are supported:

  • Mozilla Firefox 5
  • Google Chrome 12
  • Safari 5.1 (on Mac).
  • Opera 12

The Internet Explorer needs a plug-in to run WebGL data. One possible plug-in for this is Google Chrome Frame. However, this plug-in currently seems to require a web hosted WebGL content to be opened first, before it can open locally stored HTML files. This may also be the reason why http://get.webgl.org does not recognize the full WebGL capability of Internet Explorer with this plug-in.

The currently supported browsers can also be checked here.

What does a "VSR WebGL Export" example look like?

An HTML page created with the "VSR WebGL Export" plug-in looks like this (plain picture, no active WebGL content).

What size are WebGL HTML pages allowed to have?

The HTML pages can have any size, but the browser viewing it can only handle a certain amount of data via JavaScript. The amount depends on several criteria (browser used, version number etc.) and can therefore not be determined exactly. It seems that all browsers can handle up to 20 MB without problems. While most browsers have problems with larger amounts of data, Google Chrome can even handle web pages larger than 100 MB.

How to reduce the file size?

If your model contains surfaces (not only meshes), you can use less precise mesh settings in Rhino to reduce the file size ("Tools - Options - Document properties - Mesh"). Also keep in mind that textures can become pretty big when being exported as WebGL.
When sending the model, zipping reduces the file size of the HTML page to nearly 10%.