Detect context loss (libGDX on Android)

OpenGL Development
#1

Hey all,

I have a little program that simply draws a small image to a larger image and then draws the large image to the screen. It’s for a live wallpaper on Android, and it pretty much works.

I’m working with these variables:


private Pixmap smallPixmap;

private SpriteBatch batch;

private Pixmap screenPixmap;
private Texture screenTexture;

public void create(){
		batch = new SpriteBatch();
		batch.enableBlending();

		smallPixmap = new Pixmap(Gdx.files.internal("small.png"));
		screenPixmap = new Pixmap(Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getHeight(), Format.RGBA8888);
		screenTexture = new Texture(screenPixmap);
}

And in the render() method, I simple draw the small image to the large image and then redraw the large image:


public void render(float delta) {	

		Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 1f);
		Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

		screenPixmap.drawPixmap(smallPixmap, 0, 0, smallPixmap.getWidth(), smallPixmap.getHeight(), MathUtils.random(screenPixmap.getWidth()), MathUtils.random(Gdx.graphics.getHeight()), smallPixmap.getWidth(), smallPixmap.getHeight());

		//THIS IS THE LINE
		screenTexture.dispose();
		screenTexture = new Texture(screenPixmap);
		
		batch.begin();
		batch.draw(screenTexture, 0, y, screenTexture.getWidth(), screenTexture.getHeight());
		batch.end();	
}

This all seems to work. The only problem is the above commented line where I dispose of the screen texture and then recreate it. I have to do this on Android because the app (in this case a live wallpaper) can lose the openGL context, which invalidates the texture. Without that line (if I just draw the screenPixmap to the screenTexture instead), the screen either displays all white or something like this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZzBw21CcAAPN_6.png

However, it seems like overkill to create a new texture instance every single frame. My question is, is there a way to detect whether the context has been lost, so I only recreate the texture when I need to? Something like this:


if(contextWasLost){
		screenTexture.dispose();
		screenTexture = new Texture(screenPixmap);
}
else{
		screenTexture.draw(screenPixmap, 0, 0);
}

I’ve tried googling, but I haven’t been able to find anything conclusive. And it’s further complicated that it works okay on some devices (including mine), but exhibits the above errors on other phones!