Contrary to my observations a week ago, Chrome beta channel (I’m currently running 9.0.597.67 beta) now supports GPU accelerated compositing a.k.a. hardware acceleration and 3D CSS transforms.

Go to about:flags URL and enable GPU Accelerated Compositing, then restart Chrome.

Accelerated compositing works as expected. Transforms that use translate3d( x, y, 0 ) transition much more smoothly than 2D translate( x, y ).

Looking over some of the Intro to CSS 3D transforms demos, I did find a several bugs:

• -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; doesn’t hide all backfaces. See Perspective 3 demo
• 3D transforms break the Element Inspector
• I’m finding some inconsistencies between Safari and Chrome when I use both -webkit-transform-origin and -webkit-perspective-origin. I think Chrome is actually rendering it correctly.

But I’m jazzed to see 3D transforms and hardware acceleration come to Chrome. This will wake up the other browsers to get on board.