WebGL Unsupported by Hardware

As of mid 2025, certain hardware configurations have become unsupported by OpenSolar due to underlying browser changes. This affects Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and more.

Chromium-based browsers have started disabling software-rendering of 3D content, by default, due to security concerns. As a result, some users of OpenSolar are no longer able to access the 2D/3D solar designer. These users now see this error message when going to the project’s Design page:

Basic Troubleshooting

To run OpenSolar’s solar designer without issues, both your system (hardware) and browser must provide support for graphics rendering.

If you’re using a desktop or laptop computer, make sure your device has a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) with up-to-date drivers. Your browser must also support WebGL. You can check for WebGL support by visiting this page.

This is usually not an issue on fairly modern mobile devices (i.e. iPad, iPhones, Android tablets and phones).

Workarounds

1. Switch browser to Safari or Firefox
2. Use hardware with full WebGL support. All M1+ Macbooks have this support (2021 onwards).
3. Downgrade your browser to a version which still supports software rendering by default (not recommended - see version table below).
4. Force re-enable software-rendering in Chrome (not recommended - more detail below)

What changed?

If you’ve been happily using OpenSolar on your device and now it has stopped working, you’ll be wondering what happened.

Previously, Chromium-based browsers provided a software implementation of WebGL called SwiftShader. This allowed users with unsupported hardware to access OpenSolar’s solar designer (and other 3D content on the web) at the cost of worse performance.

SwiftShader was determined to be insecure and was therefore disabled by default, meaning that systems without proper WebGL support could no longer render 3D content. This affects all Chromium-based browsers like Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Brave. The Chromium team is working on a SwiftShader replacement, but it could take months or years to land.

Browsers that provide their own software implementation of WebGL, like Firefox and Safari, are currently unaffected.

Last compatible browser versions

For systems without WebGL hardware support, these are the last versions of each browser which support software-rendering.

Warning: downgrading your browser will mean that you are no longer getting the latest security patches for your browser.

Force re-enable software-rendering in Chrome

Warning: Swiftshader has been used in security exploits, re-enabling this for extended durations poses a security risk. While we don’t recommend this, we’re including the instructions here in case other security precautions are in place.

To re-enable Swiftshader:

• Goto chrome://flags
• Search for ‘swiftshader’
• You should see an item called ‘Enable unsafe SwiftShader fallback’.
• Change the dropdown next to this item to ‘Enabled’ and relaunch the browser