This is likely a stupid question, but I figured asking it here is the quickest way to get an answer. I basically just want another buffer so that I can render complex effects into it for procedural textures and such, without overwriting the contents of the frame buffer. I realize that its probably far better to do this kind of work between frames using the main buffer, but suppose that weren’t possible…
Do most/any consumer cards support this feature? Is it safe to use?
i.e. would it be best to request an aux buffer (using up precious framebuffer memory) and use it in such cases or would it be better to do a kind of swap operation, copying out the contents of the framebuffer from a texture-sized area, rendering and copying the texture and then replacing the patch of framebuffer that was overwritten with its original contents?