629519 - Use clientstorage instead of pixel buffers on OS X

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1265824

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Pixel buffers have problems with certain versions of OS X (like 10.6.2) and are probably less flexible than clientstorage. Further, Apple prefers clientstorage in their products (WindowServer, CoreAnimation).

There might be some trouble. It seems like clientstorage wants ARB_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE textures, which will be a cause of pain.

Comment 1

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Ugh.  We (I?) tried really hard to confine TEXTURE_RECTANGLE support to non-power-of-two FBO targets, without introducing it into TextureImage.  So yeah, it will be a cause of pain.

Comment 2

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

I thought we switched from client storage to pixel buffers in bug 604101 because it was faster and fixed bug 611564. What are the problems that 10.6.2 has with pixel buffers?

Comment 3

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I thought we switched from client storage to pixel buffers in bug 604101
> because it was faster and fixed bug 611564. 

We weren't using clientstorage as well as we could've been. We weren't using the  correct texture format, the texture range extension or TEXTURE_RECTANGLE. I think if we do everything right, it should be possible to match or exceed the performance of pixel buffers.

> What are the problems that 10.6.2
> has with pixel buffers?

Bug 629016

Comment 4

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Wait, so it's fixed in 10.6.3?  If so, I wouldn't go back to client storage then...

Comment 5

[Matt Woodrow (:mattwoodrow)]

This does sound like a huge amount of pain (writing a memory allocator for texture memory and recreating all textures on resize) to work around a bug in older versions of OSX.

Comment 6

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

That's not the only reason to go back to client storage. Jeff also cites the fact that Apple themselves don't use PBOs, and instead chooses to use client storage and texture range with the cached attribute.

Comment 7

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Well sure, but that could be historical (e.g. they might do it because they had that code from Way Back In The Day when they didn't support PBOs at all).  Granted, it means there's a much better chance of it staying working, but it still seems like a large chunk of work for little gain since we can't really reuse that code anywhere else, whereas PBOs are cross-platform.

Comment 8

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

We have this now from bug 1265824