Okay, I wish I would have learned this before, but for my mobile game, I need to render my scene to a texture on devices with smaller resolutions such as the iPhone. Since my game works best on mobile and touch oriented devices, that's primarily what I'm aiming for. Now, the biggest issue with certain mobile devices is screen resolution. A 480x320 resolution is far too small, so my idea is to double the size by rendering to a texture (FBO), and scale touch locations accordinly. It's kinda hard to explain, but my game requires lots of rapid movements which require a fairly large screen resolution to pull off, and there's no need for this on iPads and what not. If there's a better solution, feel free to share it.

Once again, I hate dumping code on you all, but I really must get this working asap. These are the steps I've taken:

1. Create the FBO, RBO, and a texture, and bind them together.

2. Clear the screen to white.

3. Bind the FBO.

4. Clear the screen and draw as normal.

5. Unbind the FBO.

6. Draw a screen sized quad with the results.

So far, whenever I try, nothing renders.

FBO creation and usage:

bool create_render_target( int width, int height, rendertarget_t* rt )
    {
        glGenFramebuffers(1, &rt->fbo);
        glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, rt->fbo);
        
        glGenRenderbuffers(1, &rt->rbo);
        glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, rt->rbo);
        glRenderbufferStorage(GL_RENDERBUFFER, GL_RGBA, width, height);
        glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_RENDERBUFFER, rt->rbo);
        
        glGenTextures(1, &rt->tex);
        glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, rt->tex);
        glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
        //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
        glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
        glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
        glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA,  width, height, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, NULL);
        glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_TEXTURE_2D, rt->tex, 0);
        
        GLenum status = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER);
        if(status != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE)
        {
            printf( "ogldrv_t::create_render_target(): failed to make complete framebuffer object 0x%X\n", status);
            return false;
        }
        
        glBindFramebuffer( GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0 );
        
        return true;
    }
   
    void set_render_target( rendertarget_t* rt )
    {
        GLenum error = glGetError();
        
        if( rt )
            glBindFramebuffer( GL_FRAMEBUFFER, rt->fbo );
        else
            glBindFramebuffer( GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0 );
        
        if( (error = glGetError()) != GL_NO_ERROR )
        printf( "Error binding render target!\n" );
    }

Example usage:

This->m_ogldrv->set_render_target( &rt );
This->reshape_func( width, height );
This->display_func();
This->m_ogldrv->set_render_target( NULL );

Without the rendertarget stuff, it works fine. But when I do use it, nothing renders afterwards, all I see is the colour of the screen I set it to be cleared to. I've spent hours tweaking and googling, but no success so far. Would it have to do with the size of my render target? This sucks. Any ideas? Thanks.

Shogun.

1.) In create_render_target you are creating a render buffer as well as a texture, and attach both to the same attachment point COLOR_ATTACHMENT0. That makes no sense. Use a render buffer or else a texture for a single attachment point. Since you probably want to use the result later for mapping, it should probably be a texture.

2.) Does rendering require depth buffer? Your FBO lacks a depth buffer.

EDIT: No really related to the problem, but glBindFrameBuffer( GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0 ) should also be invoked when returning due to an incomplete buffer.

1. So, don't use the render buffer? I commented that out, and it still doesn't work.

2. Same thing with or without it. My game is 2D and uses the painter's algorithm, so it's not needed.

3. Yeah, I forgot about that.

Shogun.

A guess: Are width and height both POTs? You use GL_TEXTURE_2D as attachment. Maybe you need to use GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE.

I see that you speak of "doubling 320 x 480" ... that may hint at that they are not POTs.

Be aware that this solution will probably look shit.

Sorry, but it's a fact of life that scaling algorithms produce artifacts that are not pleasing to the eye.

I have used this technique on several apps, but always when I knew the screen resolutions in advance and could adjust the graphics to be sized as factors of the supported screen sizes. So a 160 by 200 graphic will look fine at 320 by 400 and 640 by 800 and 320 by 200 but crap at 640 by 480.

I tend to use a layout system for the display now, it's just looks better even though it's more code.

^ If it comes to that, I'll deal with it. And if it's too unbearable, then I'll drop support for iPhone altogether.

A guess: Are width and height both POTs? You use GL_TEXTURE_2D as attachment. Maybe you need to use GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE.

I see that you speak of "doubling 320 x 480" ... that may hint at that they are not POTs.

It doesn't matter. I tried POT and NPOT alike. Haven't tried the texture rectangle; it doesn't sound like a bad idea.

This is the article I was basing my code off of: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/3ddrawing/conceptual/opengles_programmingguide/WorkingwithEAGLContexts/WorkingwithEAGLContexts.html

It doesn't appear to mention anything about texture dimension requirements. My game uses NPOT textures anyway.

Shogun.

Also be aware that doubling the resolution will also increase your fill-rate which will in turn affect your performance, for your use case rendering above the native resolution probably won't gain anything since it will still have to be downsized to fit the screen anyways.

If not, then I guess I'll just drop support for iPhones and only support iPads as far as iOS devices are concerned. I'm aware that iOS devices tend to have a lower speed when it comes to fill rates (especially older iPads), and my game has had issues with that in the past. So yeah.

Either way, I still need to find a solution to this FBO problem because for Android devices like the Galaxy phones and Nexus tablets, the resolution is too large, and subtracts from the game experience. For Android devices, I'm aiming to limit the resolution to 720p.

Shogun.

I didn't know about contentScaleFactor, so I'll attempt to use that instead.

So far, it doesn't appear to be working. It's as if no matter what value I set it to, it just stays the same. The results returned from [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds] are the same as usual (320x480). Am I doing something wrong?

Shogun.

EDIT: Had to do a bit of research on this. I had to modify CAEAGLLayer.contentScale as well, then had to manually scale the results of [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds] by 2, as well as the touch results. Works fine in the simulator so far. Thanks.