multiple views vs calling bgfx::frame

[npnp]

Hello,

I'm trying to learn bgfx, liking it a lot so far.
Currently struggling with the idea of Views.

What I'm trying to do would probably fit into what is so far described as "utility" more than a game:

I'm rendering a bunch of objects with dynamic textures(they change almost every frame).
Those textures are then sent through multiple passes of effects (like blur, edge detection etc). This structure can technically change at any moment, but practically it changes rarely.

This involves multiple framebuffers, and since we can have only one fb per view, there seem to be two options:

1. Have a new view id per frame buffer(includes suggestion from another thread to add sort of a manager to handle large view counts etc).
2. Use viewID 1 to render each pass to a framebuffer and call bgfx::frame() after bgfx::submit(), then use viewID 0 to render stuff to the backbuffer.

I was wondering if there is an advantage to one method over the other?
Or maybe I'm getting it all wrong?

thanks a bunch,
nesa

[pezcode]

The output between those two options should be identical, but frame() has some added overhead (that may or may not be negligible depending on your case). If you're limited by the view count, consider raising the limit.

Specifically for your use case, you could also consider rendering to sub-sections of the same texture (or layers of an array texture), minimizing the number of framebuffers.

[npnp]

thanks, thats really helpful info.

I'll have a quick look at bgfx source to see what kind of overhead it might be, but I suspect it will be negligible.

cheers,
nesa