How supported are shared GLContexts?

OpenGL Development JOGL Development
#1

I’m trying to figure out a system for abstracting multiple surfaces to render to (onscreen (GLCanvas) and offscreen (GLPBuffer or fbo’s)) while guaranteeing that the surfaces don’t get corrupted data (e.g. a texture on one surface looks the same on another). The problem is almost trivial if GLContexts can be shared on the hardware, but if not it becomes a different matter.

Before trying to make this work in any situation, I was wondering if anyone knew how likely shared contexts are to be supported. If it’s common, especially in midrange to nice hardware, I may just rely on that.

Thanks

#2

Unless anyone has any negative reasons, I’m going to assume that context sharing is available and not support people who refuse to update their machines.

#3

OpenGL context sharing is pretty basic functionality that should be well supported. I recall seeing a bug in this support in one vendor’s Vista OpenGL drivers a couple of years ago but I’m pretty sure it’s since been fixed.

#4

Thanks, that’s good to know.