docs/pbuffers.html

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