node-gles-webgl2

Headless WebGL2 / OpenGL ES 3 runtime for Node.js backed by ANGLE.

This package is a fork of node-gles. It preserves the existing WebGL1 surface and exposes additional GLES3-backed APIs through WebGL2-compatible JavaScript method names.

WebGL2 Coverage

Feature	Status
Runtime and context lifecycle	✅
WebGL1 API and selected extension aliases	✅
WebGL2 core method names	✅
VAO, instancing, draw buffers, and multisample framebuffers	✅
Buffer, sampler, sync, and PBO operations	✅
WebGL2 uniform and matrix APIs	✅
3D textures and 2D texture arrays	✅
Queries, transform feedback, and integer vertex attributes	✅
Browser-compatible overloads and error semantics	🟡
Browser-complete WebGL2 conformance	❌

Platform Support

Platform	CI
Linux x64
Linux arm64
macOS arm64
macOS x64
Windows x64
Windows arm64

Extension Support

getSupportedExtensions() reports WebGL extension names, not raw GL_* ANGLE extension strings. Runtime availability still depends on the selected ANGLE backend.

Exposed

• ANGLE_instanced_arrays
• EXT_blend_minmax
• EXT_color_buffer_float / WEBGL_color_buffer_float
• EXT_color_buffer_half_float
• EXT_frag_depth
• EXT_float_blend
• EXT_sRGB
• EXT_shader_texture_lod
• EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
• EXT_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge
• OES_element_index_uint
• OES_standard_derivatives
• OES_texture_float / OES_texture_float_linear
• OES_texture_half_float / OES_texture_half_float_linear
• OES_vertex_array_object
• WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc / WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc_srgb
• WEBGL_debug_renderer_info
• WEBGL_depth_texture
• WEBGL_draw_buffers
• WEBGL_lose_context
• EXT_disjoint_timer_query_webgl2

Not Exposed

• EXT_disjoint_timer_query (WebGL1 variant)

Install

From npm:

npm install node-gles-webgl2

Usage

const nodeGles = require("node-gles-webgl2");

const gl = nodeGles.createWebGLRenderingContext({
  width: 800,
  height: 500,
  majorVersion: 3,
  minorVersion: 0,
});

console.log(gl.getParameter(gl.VERSION));

Context Options

• width / height: drawing buffer size, default 1.
• majorVersion / minorVersion: requested OpenGL ES version, default 3.0.
• webGLCompatibility: requests ANGLE WebGL compatibility mode. The legacy misspelled webGLCompability option is still accepted as an alias.
• enabledExtensions: optional WebGL extension allowlist. When set, only listed supported extensions are exposed.
• disabledExtensions: optional WebGL extension blocklist. This takes precedence over enabledExtensions.

Context Lifecycle

For batch rendering, call gl.destroy() or gl.dispose() after the final readPixels() for a context. This releases the native EGL context and pbuffer surface immediately instead of waiting for JavaScript garbage collection.

const gl = nodeGles.createWebGLRenderingContext({ width: 3000, height: 2000 });

try {
  // render and readPixels
} finally {
  gl.destroy();
}

Build From Source

From git:

git clone https://github.com/dsafdsaf132/node-gles-webgl2.git
cd node-gles-webgl2
npm install --ignore-scripts
node scripts/install.js
npm run build

From a release source tarball, use the same commands after extracting the archive.

ANGLE headers are bundled in the main package. Prebuilt libraries are published as platform packages for Linux, macOS, and Windows on x64 and arm64. npm automatically installs only the package matching the current platform, so installation does not fetch a separate ANGLE release archive.

License

This package is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

node-gles-webgl2 is a fork of node-gles. Original source files retain their upstream copyright notices, including Google LLC / Google Inc. notices where applicable. Modifications in this repository add WebGL2 / OpenGL ES 3 bindings, packaging, CI, and publishing workflows for node-gles-webgl2.