Question

I’m making a simple voxel engine (think Minecraft) and am currently at the stage of getting rid of occluded faces to gain some precious fps. I’m not very experimented in OpenGL and do not quite understand how the glColorMask magic works.

This is what I have:

// new and shiny
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);

// this one goes without saying
glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);

// I want to see my code working, so fill the mask
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL);

// fill the z-buffer, or whatever
glDepthFunc(GL_LESS);
glColorMask(0,0,0,0);
glDepthMask(GL_TRUE);

// do a first draw pass
world_display();

// now only show lines, so I can see the occluded lines do not display
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_LINE);

// I guess the error is somewhere here
glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL);
glColorMask(1,1,1,1);
glDepthMask(GL_FALSE);

// do a second draw pass for the real rendering
world_display();

This somewhat works, but once I change the camera position the world starts to fade away, I see less and less lines until nothing at all.

Answer 1

It sounds like you are not clearing your depth buffer.

You need to have depth writing enabled (via glDepthMask(GL_TRUE);) while you attempt to clear the depth buffer with glClear. You probably still have it disabled from the previous frame, causing all your clears to be no-ops in subsequenct frames. Just move your glDepthMask call before the glClear.