| Brian Paul | 352e0d0 | 2003-09-02 16:58:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | <HTML> |
| 2 | |
| 3 | <TITLE>PBuffer Rendering</TITLE> |
| 4 | |
| Brian Paul | 36da045 | 2005-01-20 03:55:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 5 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mesa.css"></head> |
| 6 | |
| 7 | <BODY> |
| Brian Paul | 352e0d0 | 2003-09-02 16:58:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 8 | |
| 9 | <H1>PBuffer Rendering</H1> |
| 10 | |
| 11 | <p> |
| 12 | Basically, FBconfigs and PBuffers allow you to do off-screen rendering |
| 13 | with OpenGL. The OSMesa interface does basically the same thing, but |
| 14 | fbconfigs and pbuffers are supported by more vendors. |
| Brian Paul | 6bca16b | 2004-11-27 19:42:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 15 | PBuffer rendering may also be hardware accelerated. |
| Brian Paul | 352e0d0 | 2003-09-02 16:58:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 16 | </p> |
| 17 | |
| 18 | <p> |
| 19 | PBuffers are getting more use nowadays, though they've actually been |
| 20 | around for a long time on IRIX systems and other workstations. |
| 21 | </p> |
| 22 | |
| 23 | <p> |
| 24 | The |
| 25 | <a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/SGIX/fbconfig.txt" |
| 26 | target="_parent">GL_SGIX_fbconfig</a> |
| 27 | and |
| 28 | <a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/SGIX/pbuffer.txt" |
| 29 | target="_parent"> |
| 30 | GL_SGIX_pbuffer</a> extensions describe the functionality. |
| 31 | More recently, these extensions have been promoted to ARB extensions (on |
| 32 | Windows at least). |
| 33 | </p> |
| 34 | |
| 35 | <p> |
| 36 | The Mesa/progs/xdemos/ directory has some useful code for working |
| 37 | with pbuffers: |
| 38 | </p> |
| 39 | |
| 40 | <ul> |
| 41 | <li><b>pbinfo.c</b> - like glxinfo, it prints a list of available |
| 42 | fbconfigs and whether each supports pbuffers. |
| 43 | <li><b>pbutil.c</b> - a few utility functions for dealing with |
| 44 | fbconfigs and pbuffers. |
| 45 | <li><b>pbdemo.c</b> - a demonstration of off-screen rendering with pbuffers. |
| 46 | </ul> |
| 47 | |
| 48 | <p> |
| 49 | Mesa 4.1 and later support GL_SGIX_fbconfig and GL_SGIX_pbuffer (software |
| 50 | rendering only). |
| 51 | </p> |
| 52 | |
| 53 | </BODY> |
| 54 | </HTML> |