Re: [Plib-users] Threading

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Treasa Parakkat wrote:

> Can PLIB run in a separate thread? I mean, can my main program spawn off a
> thread that does all my PLIB calls without any problems?

Yes...if *all* the PLIB calls happen in that one thread - and all the OpenGL
calls in that same thread - then there should be no problems.

What you can't do is things like playing with the scene graph in one thread
and rendering it in the other because there is no internal protection against
that kind of thing.

With extreme care, you could do things like building a new section of
scene graph in one thread - and rendering a disconnected part of the
scene graph in another - then when both processes finish working, connecting
the new scene graph segment into the main tree.  Similarly, you could
disconnect a section of the tree (when you know the rendering thread
is idle) and delete it in the other thread.

Those things are tricky and not 100% guaranteed - but for what you describe,
there shouldn't be a problem.

> Also, when running PLIB, does it spawn any threads or create any new
> processes?

No...although the underlying OpenGL implementation might.


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