WebGL Face Mapped Points

This WebGL example draws circular points mapped with a texture. Microsoft browsers haven't implemented point size. Older Android Chrome and Firefox browsers might not run with texture mapped points.

Animated Colorful Dots from WebGL Points

Testing reveals some versions of Internet Explorer for Windows PCs and Windows Phone 8.1 support a maximum point size of one only. In other words each point displays with just one pixel. Very small points render. Apparently WebGL specifications call for one pixel point size as a minimum. Therefore Internet Explorer remains WebGL 1.0 compliant.

However the point examples work fine with iPhone 6 Safari, Android Chrome, as well as Firefox, Chrome, and Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.

One work around, for older browsers, involves preparing circular or square shapes with vertices or textures. Draw with TRIANGLES rather than POINTS. Call the WebGL method drawElements() as follows. Number e.nCount represents the number of vertices to render and e.nOffset represents the location within the Vertex Buffer Object to begin drawing operations.

gl.drawElements
(
 gl.TRIANGLES, 
 e.nCount, 
 gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 
 e.nOffset
);