Internet Explorer 9 isn't the only pony in the hardware accelerated rendering race. Just about everyone is getting in on the GPU action, and Google's offering up some new partner-created demos to show what Chrome can do.

The WebGL-powered demos include a wall of photos by CoolIris, virtual aquarium, an animated grassy field, and a slick little paint-your-own-figurine -- on which I wasted far too much time "testing."

The Chromium blog points out that you'll need either Chromium of Chrome Canary installed to get the full experience, and you'll also want to add --enable-accelerated-2d-canvas to your shortcut to turn on the necessary (for best performance, not for WebGL) hardware acceleration features.