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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T01:51:57+00:00

I need to write to the depth buffer on an android device (OpenGL ES

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I need to write to the depth buffer on an android device (OpenGL ES 2.0). Since gl_FragDepth is not writable under OGL ES 2.0, I have to find a workaround. I actually want to render spheres via raycasting, similar to this: http://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/2011/05/08/enhancing-molecules-using-opengl-es-20 .
However, the solution explained on this website (offscreen render pass writing the depth using a special glBlendEquation) is only working on Apple devices, not on Android, because GL_MIN_EXT-blending is not supported.

On my Tegra3 tablet I was able to implement this method: Android GLES20.glBlendEquation not working? (btw, I recommend using linearized depth values, they give better results!)
It works quite good, but of course this is only available on Nvidia GPUs.

In theory, there is the extension GL_EXT_frag_depth (see Can an OpenGL ES fragment shader change the depth value of a fragment?), but it is not available on Android devices as well.

Finally, you could of course write the depth buffer for just one sphere (in an offscreen render pass), then write the depth buffer for the next sphere in a second render pass and combine the two in a third render pass. In doing so, you would have 2*n+1 render passes for n spheres – which seems to be quite inefficient!

So since I am running out of ideas, my question is: Can you think of another, generic way/workaround to write the depth buffer on an OpenGL ES 2.0 Android device?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, you are sure running out of options here. I don’t know of any further workaround because I don’t know Opengl ES soooo well.

    The only thing that comes into my mind would be combining the brute-force multi-pass approach with some preprocessing:

    Sort your spheres into groups where the atoms are not overlapping each other. It should be possible to sort all your spheres from proteins in less then ten groups. Then render all spheres of each group in one pass. The vertex-depth is sufficient here, because the spheres do not overlap. Then you can “depth-blend” the results.

    This requires some preprocessing which could be a problem.

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