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