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Scene viewer requirements

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You can use the scene viewer in desktop web browsers that support WebGL, a web technology standard for rendering 3D graphics. In addition, your hardware must have a graphics card installed that supports WebGL. Make sure your graphics card has the latest drivers installed and has at least 512 MB of video memory. For best performance, your graphics card should have 1 GB or more of video memory. The scene viewer is not supported on mobile devices.

Browser requirements

The scene viewer requires a desktop web browser that supports WebGL, a web technology standard for rendering 3D graphics. The latest versions of the most common desktop browsers have WebGL built in. To test if your browser has WebGL enabled, open get.webgl.org. To troubleshoot WebGL-related issues, visit WebGL Troubleshooting.

The scene viewer supports the following web browsers:

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Safari
Note:

For the best viewing experience, use the latest versions of Chrome or Firefox.

Firefox

Some older versions of Firefox do not have WebGL enabled by default. To enable WebGL, do the following:

  1. In the address bar, type about:config.
  2. Search for WebGL.
  3. Ensure webgl.disabled is set to false.
  4. Set webgl.force-enabled to true.

Internet Explorer 11

Internet Explorer (IE) versions 10 and earlier do not have WebGL support and do not work with the scene viewer. IE 11 has an experimental WebGL implementation that currently does not support all of the scene viewer functionality. Depending on the update version of IE 11, the following functionality is either not working correctly or is missing entirely:

  • IE 11 with WebGL 0.91—Not supported.
  • IE 11 with WebGL 0.92—No shadows, no antialiasing, and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.
  • IE 11 with WebGL 0.93—No diffuse shadows and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.
  • IE 11 with WebGL 0.94—No diffuse shadows and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.

Safari on Mac OS

Some older versions of Safari do not have WebGL enabled by default. To enable WebGL, do the following:

  1. Click the wheel icon, click Preferences, and click Advanced.
  2. Check the box next to Show Develop menu in menu bar.
  3. In the newly enabled Develop menu, click Enable WebGL.

Hardware requirements

Your computer hardware needs to have a minimum of 2 GB system memory and a video graphics card that supports WebGL. It is recommended that you have at least 4 GB of system memory.

Your hardware should have a nonmobile graphics card with at least 512 MB of video memory. For the best performance, it is recommended that you have a graphics card with at least 1 GB of video memory, especially for working with larger or more memory-intensive scenes. Nonmobile versions of graphics cards typically have better performance than mobile graphics cards (denoted with m or mobile). To get more detailed information about WebGL requirements, visit WebGL Troubleshooting.

Graphics cards

  • Graphics card needs to have support for OpenGL 3.0 (Shader Model 4.0).
  • AMD/ATI: Radeon 3xxx or higher.
  • NVIDIA: GeForce 8xxx or higher or GeForce 2xx or higher.
  • NVIDIA: Quadro with support for OpenGL 3.0 or higher.
  • Intel: HD 3000 or higher.
Note:

Some systems can automatically switch between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics cards to render 3D graphics. The scene viewer works best with a dedicated graphics card; therefore, in your graphics card driver settings, make sure the per-application settings for your web browser are set to the dedicated graphics card. If this is not set, some point symbols and labels may not display correctly.