CODEWITHSUNDEEP
openglresource-cleanup
ayangd
ayangd

Reputation: 13

Is it OK NOT to do glDeleteBuffers and other OpenGL (3.3) cleanups?

I sometimes forgot to do cleanup and afraid if the resources of them resides inside the GPU memory.

Things I use: shader programs, vertex array objects and buffer objects, textures

Upvotes: 0

Views: 992

Answers (2)

Nicol Bolas
Nicol Bolas

Reputation: 473397

All resources you create for an OpenGL context are associated with that context (and any other context that you share resources with). If you destroy that context, all resources associated with it will be freed.

If you don't destroy the context when your program exits, then the OS will clean up after you.

That being said, destroying resources when you're done with them is a good habit to get into.

Upvotes: 1

gkv311
gkv311

Reputation: 2982

All OpenGL resources are supposed to be automatically released on destruction of OpenGL context (all shared contexts, to be precise). So practically, there should be no risk in leaking GPU memory when closing OpenGL context with some unreleased objects as far as your application does not trigger some video driver bug.

System will also take care on releasing all resources of closed application, even if some OpenGL contexts have been forgotten to be closed. Otherwise, it would be a total nightmare debugging 3D applications if GPU would keep allocated resources on an application crash.

To prove the idea - just write a simple test application allocating large portions of GPU memory (textures/VBOs) and track memory usage via external tools. Luckily, Task Manager in Windows 10 has been significantly improved and shows detailed GPU memory statistics.

From design point of view, however, it sounds like a bad idea tolerating incomplete clean-ups as the same release procedures used in other renderer code will cause real problems.

Upvotes: 1

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