OpenGL Window Rendering

This page is about the ​OpenGL rendering mode of the xpra client, for running opengl applications in an xpra session see Usage: OpenGL Applications, for general opengl debugging see wiki/Debugging/OpenGL.

This wiki/ClientRendering mode should be used by default on platforms that support it, which is most of them, when using the GTK2 client, which is the default client.

For any OpenGL warnings/errors, please first check the ​OpenGL FAQ entries

This mode should be much faster than the fallback Pixmap based rendering as it is GPU accelerated and the Colourspace Conversion step can be skipped as it supports YUV pixel formats natively.

Notes

Some drivers are blacklisted for opengl support, for example nouveau on Linux, Intel on MS Windows and OSX. Status messages should be printed out when using the command line tool to attach to a session (unless the configuration file or command line options specifically disabled it). The --opengl=yes|no|auto option can be used to override the automatic detection of supported drivers.

You can also find the opengl driver information in the Features pane of the Session Info dialog from the system tray menu.

To test/diagnose your system and driver support, run:

• on Posix:

  python [/browser/xpra/trunk/src/xpra/client/gl/gl_check.py xpra/client/gl/gl_check.py]
  

• on MS Windows:

  OpenGL_check.exe
  

• on OSX:

  ./Xpra.app/Contents/Helpers/OpenGL_check
  

The output will show the driver, vendor and the status of various required extensions.

OpenGL Related Tickets

• #147 - original feature ticket
• #150 - OpenGL usage bugs
• #226 - OSX build issues
• #227 - MS Windows specific issues
• #229 - bug: hard crash
• #314 - VirtualBox bug (crash VM)
• #321 - problem with small rgb updates
• #328 - codec split
• #367 - minor UI tweak
• #365 - future optimization
• #372 - Linux client crash
• #385 - Improvements: scaling / RGB
• #745 - Intel driver problems
• #468 - OpenGL rendering bug due to alpha channel
• #478 - flickering
• #492 - corrupted pixels on resume

OpenGL Reference Links

• ​opengl.org wiki
• ​open.gl This guide will teach you the basics of using OpenGL to develop modern graphics applications
• ​opengl-tutorial.org This site is dedicated to tutorials for OpenGL 3.3 and later ''
• ​OpenGL 2 Tutorials at ​swiftless.com
• ​wikibooks.org: OpenGL Programming
• ​Premultiplied Alpha (in OpenGL)
• ​Modern OpenGL tutorial (python)