Off-screen rendering

[varieux]

Hello,

Can it be said that off-screen rendering is not universally supported?
How about under Windows? Could it be that one video card supports it but that others don't?

Thanks for any info.

[Alfonse Reinheart]

Can it be said that off-screen rendering is not universally supported?

Define "universally supported?"

OpenGL 3.0 and above provides access to framebuffer objects, which is really all you need for off-screen rendering. EXT_framebuffer_object was available before GL 3.0, and it was supported by ATI and NVIDIA cards pre-GL 3.0.

Is that sufficiently "universal" for you? Does the WGL_ARB_pbuffer extension count as "off-screen rendering" for your needs? Does the fact that Intel OpenGL drivers are unreliable in general make it less "universal"?

What is the scope of your universe?