CODEWITHSUNDEEP
opengl
rlkw1024
rlkw1024

Reputation: 6515

Can OpenGL VBOs leak memory?

Suppose I call glGenBuffers (or createBuffer in WebGL), and later I lose the buffer name. E.g. it goes out of scope, is garbage collected, whatever the case may be. Making an analogy to C programming, that seems like a memory leak. Effectively, there's a block of allocated memory (on the GPU) with no pointer to it. I'm guessing the GPU can't garbage collect that memory, because it can't automatically infer that the client application is done with it.

First, is this indeed a memory leak? Second, if I call glDeleteBuffers (or deleteBuffer in WebGL) before losing my buffer name, does that free the memory and avoid a leak?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3072

Answers (1)

Jaa-c
Jaa-c

Reputation: 5137

Yes, that will cause a memory leak. You have to call glDeleteBuffers for every allocated buffer. If you call it, it frees the data on the GPU and reverts the binding to 0. If you wouldn't call it, GPU would eventually run out of memory and your driver would probably crash.

Also note, that you don't need to call glDeleteBuffers after every call of glBufferData, it destroys any data that was previously bound to it. Call glDeleteBuffers only once, when you won't use the buffer anymore.

Upvotes: 6

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