I’m wondering if there is a faster way than using glReadPixels () to read from the color buffer? With the SGIX_depth_texture extension, the depth buffer is open to reading at a reasonably fast speed (I’ve never actually used it, but that’s what I’ve gathered from reading it), so I wonder if there is a way to read the color buffer at aproximately the same speed. I’m concerning myself with nVIDIA specific hardware, so if there is an NV extension, that’s a good solution.
Hrmm… I’m really looking for something that does the actual transfer faster. It seems to me that if I need information from the color buffer, I’m going to have to wait until it is finished rendering primitives anyway, and as such I’ll be forcing it to be synched up. Right?