What exactly is a surface in OpenGL ES or Direct3D?
3d, direct3d, graphics, opengl-es
Solution
Basically, a surface is something that you can render to. It's a kind of device context, but potentially smarter since surfaces may know how to display themselves or do other useful things. EGL has three surface types:
- Window Surface: a window.
- Pixmap Surface: an image.
- Pbuffer Surface: a pixel buffer.
This forum post may be helpful.
Problem
I did not find a good definition of the concept of a drawing surface. What properties are associated with a surface? In the context of pure OpenGL there is no surface, since OpenGL has no notion of window system specific things. In OpenGL ES though you have the EGL API, which introduces the concept of a drawing surface, without defining it properly. What is your concise definition of a drawing surface?