This is mostly a question for nVidia and ATI driver guys, I guess, although hearing anyone with experience in the area would be helpful.
What is the overhead of repeatedly switching between rendering into a pbuffer and rendering into the framebuffer while drawing a frame? Is it “free”, “on the order of texture switch” or “fairly expensive” ? I’m specifically asking about the switch cost, as I’m assuming the render cost will be comparable between frame buffer and pbuffer.
(I realize I should just code it up and try it, but before I even get that far I’d like a rough estimate).
using a pbuffer does the mostly the same… but most of all you dont have a problem if you move another window over your one ( move the doswindow over yours at the leftbottom and you see the buggy reflection )…