Framebuffer and Renderbuffer Objects

关于framebuffer和renderbuffer，我一直理解的不足，今天在<OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide>上面找到一段关于这两种对象的描述，觉得非常好，读完之后，对这个的印象就清晰了很多，终于明白什么时候该用何种类型的buffer。

A renderbuffer object is a 2D image buffer allocated by the application. The renderbuffer can be used to allocate and store color, depth, or stencil values and can be used as a color, depth, or stencil attachment in a framebuffer object. A renderbuffer is similar to an off-screen window system provided drawable surface, such as a pbuffer. A renderbuffer, however, cannot be directly used as a GL texture.

A framebuffer object (often referred to as an FBO) is a collection of color, depth, and stencil buffer attachment points; state that describes properties such as the size and format of the color, depth, and stencil buffers attached to the FBO; and the names of the texture and renderbuffer objects attached to the FBO. Various 2D images can be attached to the color attachment point in the framebuffer object. These include a renderbuffer object that stores color values, a mip-level of a 2D texture or a cubemap face, or even a mip-level of a 2D slice in a 3D texture. Similarly, various 2D images contain- ing depth values can be attached to the depth attachment point of an FBO. These can include a renderbuffer, a mip-level of a 2D texture or a cubemap face that stores depth values. The only 2D image that can be attached to the stencil attachment point of an FBO is a renderbuffer object that stores stencil values.