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| <TITLE>PBuffer Rendering</TITLE> |
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| <H1>PBuffer Rendering</H1> |
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| <p> |
| Basically, FBconfigs and PBuffers allow you to do off-screen rendering |
| with OpenGL. The OSMesa interface does basically the same thing, but |
| fbconfigs and pbuffers are supported by more vendors. |
| PBuffer rendering may also be hardware accelerated. |
| </p> |
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| <p> |
| PBuffers are getting more use nowadays, though they've actually been |
| around for a long time on IRIX systems and other workstations. |
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| <p> |
| The |
| <a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/SGIX/fbconfig.txt" |
| target="_parent">GL_SGIX_fbconfig</a> |
| and |
| <a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/SGIX/pbuffer.txt" |
| target="_parent"> |
| GL_SGIX_pbuffer</a> extensions describe the functionality. |
| More recently, these extensions have been promoted to ARB extensions (on |
| Windows at least). |
| </p> |
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| <p> |
| The Mesa/progs/xdemos/ directory has some useful code for working |
| with pbuffers: |
| </p> |
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| <ul> |
| <li><b>pbinfo.c</b> - like glxinfo, it prints a list of available |
| fbconfigs and whether each supports pbuffers. |
| <li><b>pbutil.c</b> - a few utility functions for dealing with |
| fbconfigs and pbuffers. |
| <li><b>pbdemo.c</b> - a demonstration of off-screen rendering with pbuffers. |
| </ul> |
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| <p> |
| Mesa 4.1 and later support GL_SGIX_fbconfig and GL_SGIX_pbuffer (software |
| rendering only). |
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