docs/pbuffers.html

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   3 <TITLE>PBuffer Rendering</TITLE>
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   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.
  15 PBuffer rendering may also be hardware accelerated.
  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>
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