[Public WebGL] using the same context with multiple canvases

[Florian Bösch]

A canvas on which a webgl getContext has been called has two distinct
concepts. The context, which is the gl context (or the semantic equivalent)
and an FBO (the drawing buffer). A 2D canvas does not have an FBO. So
creating a context alone does not create the required FBOs that a canvas
requires in order to be drawn onto by WebGL. Unless another object is
introduced which encapsulates this state, FBO creation would be implicit
which is probably a bad idea. Chris Marrin explained this on the 18th
October 2012 on this thread
https://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/archives/1210/msg00064.html


On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Ian Hickson <ian...@> wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Dec 2012, Gregg Tavares (社ç~T¨) wrote:
> >
> > So to continue this discussion we still need to figure out what we plan
> to
> > do for WebGL 1 context, multiple canvases
> >
> > IIRC the current thinking is this
> >
> >     gl = new WebGLRenderingContext();
> >     db1 = new Drawingbuffer(creationAttributes1);
> >     db2 = new Drawingbuffer(creationAttributes2);
> >     canvas1 = document.createElement("canvas");
> >     canvas2 = document.createElement("canvas");
> >     canvas1.setDrawingbuffer(db1);
> >     canvas2.setDrawingbuffer(db2);
> >     gl.bindDrawingbuffer(db1);
> >     gl.drawXXX(...);
> >     gl.bindDrawingbuffer(db2);
> >     gl.drawXXX(...);
>
> I don't really understand what a drawing buffer is in this API.
>
> Why wouldn't you just do:
>
>    gl = new WebGLRenderingContext();
>    canvas1.setContext(gl);
>    gl.drawXXX(...);
>    canvas2.setContext(gl);
>    gl.drawXXX(...);
>
> ...?
>
> In any case, I think it can be made any number of ways, the only important
> thing at this point to make sure it works consistently with the 2D context
> and in particular to make sure it works in Worker threads is to use the
> API described here:
>
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Nov/0199.html
>
> Specifically, the bit starting "it will require some additions to WebGL".
>
> HTH,
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>
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