DeviceFeatures

The luma.gl Device provides a device "feature" system that allows applications to check whether specific advanced capabilities are present on the current browser or GPU.

Background

Both WebGL 2 and WebGPU provide extension mechanisms that allow implementations to expose additional capabilities that may not be supported on all browsers and GPUs. This allows new GPU features to be provided without waiting for new official versions of the WebGL or WebGPU standards to be approved and published.

Device.features

luma.gl provides a unified feature detection system across WebGPU, WebGL, WGLSL and GLSL. Each device has a device.features field that holds a DeviceFeatures object with an API similar to Set<DeviceFeature>.

Feature Name	This Browser	Description	WebGL counterpart
WebGPU Extensions
depth-clip-control	N/A	Disable depth clipping via unclippedDepth	WEBGL_depth_texture
indirect-first-instance	N/A	Specify instance index via GPU buffer	N/A
timestamp-query	N/A	GPU timer query support	N/A
WebGL Extensions
timer-query-webgl	N/A	GPU timer support	EXT_disjoint_timer_query
compilation-status-async-webgl	N/A	Non-blocking compile/link status	KHR_parallel_shader_compile
polygon-mode-webgl	N/A	Wireframe rendering parameters (debug only)	WEBGL_polygon_mode
provoking-vertex-webgl	N/A	Primitive vertex used for flat shading	WEBGL_provoking_vertex
Shader Extensions
shader-f16	N/A	WGSL supports f16	N/A
shader-noperspective-interpolation-webgl	N/A	GLSL noperspective interpolation qualifier	NV_shader_noperspective_interpolation
shader-conservative-depth-webgl	N/A	GLSL enable early depth test optimizations	EXT_conservative_depth
shader-clip-cull-distance-webgl	N/A	GLSL gl_ClipDistance[]/gl_CullDistance[]	WEBGL_clip_cull_distance
Texture Extensions
depth32float-stencil8	N/A		N/A
rg11b10ufloat-renderable	N/A	rg11b10ufloat textures renderable	N/A
float32-renderable-webgl	N/A	float32 textures renderable	EXT_color_buffer_float
float16-renderable-webgl	N/A	float16 textures renderable	EXT_color_buffer_half_float
rgb9e5ufloat-renderable-webgl	N/A	rgb9e5ufloat renderable	'WEBGL_render_shared_exponent'
snorm8-renderable-webgl	N/A	r,rg,rgba8snorm renderable	EXT_render_snorm
norm16-renderable-webgl	N/A	r,rg,rgba16norm renderable	[EXT_texture_norm16][EXT_texture_norm16]
snorm16-renderable-webgl	N/A	r,rg,rgba16snorm renderable	[EXT_texture_norm16][EXT_texture_norm16], EXT_render_snorm
float32-filterable	N/A	float32 textures are filterable	OES_texture_float_linear
float16-filterable-webgl	N/A	float16 textures are filterable	OES_texture_half_float_linear
texture-filterable-anisotropic-webgl	N/A	anisotropic filtering, common	EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
bgra8unorm-storage	N/A	can be used as storage binding.
texture-blend-float-webgl	N/A	float texture blending	EXT_float_blend
Compressed Texture Support
texture-compression-bc	N/A	DXT (BC1-BC7). Desktops.
texture-compression-bc5-webgl	N/A	DXT (BC1-BC5). Desktops.
texture-compression-etc2	N/A	Performance caveats.
texture-compression-astc	N/A	ASTC.
texture-compression-etc1-webgl	N/A	Qualcomm Snapdragon. Android.
texture-compression-pvrtc-webgl	N/A	PowerVR GPUs, iOS devices.
texture-compression-atc-webgl	N/A	Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Android.

The table above uses the luma.gl Device.feature field to check the capabilities of your current browser. You can open this page in different browsers and on different machines to compare capabilities.

Remarks

• On WebGL, extensions will not be enabled until they have been queried.
• Given that queries to driver and GPU are typically expensive in WebGL, the Device will cache any queried extensions.
• A substantial set of features are devoted to texture capabilites, however these can also be queried on a per-texture basis.
• Both WebGL2 and WebGPU are continuously developing new extensions. The feature list will be updated as new extensions are added to the standards.

Usage

An example of feature detection

// Checks if `Query` objects can do async queries of GPU timings
if (device.features.has('timer-query-webgl')) {
   ...
}
// Alternatively - do the same query using raw WebGL extensions
if (webglDevice.gl.getExtension('EXT_disjoint_timer_query_webgl2')) {
   ...
}

Check native extensions

• WebGL Report
• WebGPU Report