what do they refer to when they say....

Hello everyone, what does it mean when they refer to ‘fragments’. Are they refering to primitives or something else? Please clarify. Thanks

They mean pixels. I think the distinction is made because it reffers to different terms, like the texture term, the color term etc before they are completely processed and written to the framebuffer. So the texture fragment color, is the texture color for a pixel.

Thanks!

Originally posted by dorbie:
They mean pixels. I think the distinction is made because it reffers to different terms, like the texture term, the color term etc before they are completely processed and written to the framebuffer. So the texture fragment color, is the texture color for a pixel.

A fragment is basically a bundle of state used to update a single pixel. E.g a fragment may have an alpha value used in alpha testing, even though the framebuffer pixels doesn’t have an alpha value.

If I’m not mistaken the definition is

Fragment = RGBA + depth + stencil

Pixel = RGB (A, if your card supports destination alpha)