SVG is many times slower than an optimized graphics library rendered on the canvas tag in 2d or webgl contexts. There are many libraries based on the canvas tag for graphics but not all of them are focused on doing visualizations but people still use them for these use cases all the time.

The most well known WebGL library is https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/ Which has been used for many examples like this http://armsglobe.chromeexperiments.com/

But you could look at the libraries focused on 2d like these http://paperjs.org/ http://fabricjs.com/ But the larger 2d canvas libraries also have much of the same abilities. http://createjs.com/ - http://codepen.io/ianwhitfield/pen/BKOJmj https://github.com/pixijs/pixi.js - http://anvaka.github.io/ngraph/examples/pixi.js/06%20-%20Pac...

If you are just rendering vectors like an icon image, there is no harm in using SVG. If you want access to nodes on a page with a JavaScript library like jQuery, SVG is still the best option. For everything else SVG is not the most performant and is not able to deliver on many graphics abilities that the Canvas tag is capable of. I respect that in most visualizations it doesn't matter and it might be easier but it doesn't mean SVG is the best thing to use for all graphics.