More specific OpenGL error information

Question

Is there a way to retrieve more detailed error information when OpenGL has flagged an error? I know there isn't in core OpenGL, but is there perhaps some common extension or platform- or driver-dependent way or anything at all?

My basic problem is that I have a game (written in Java with JOGL), and when people have trouble with it, which they do on certain hardware/software configurations, it can be quite hard to trace down where the root of the problem lies. For performance reasons, I can't keep calling glGetError for each command but only do so at a few points in the program, so it's kind of hard to even find what command even flagged the error to begin with. Even if I could, however, the extremely general error codes that OpenGL have don't really tell me all that much about what happened (seeing as how the manpages on the commands even describe how the various error codes are reused for sometimes quite many different actual error conditions).

It would be tremendously helpful if there were a way to find out what OpenGL command actually flagged the error, and also more details about the error that was flagged (like, if I get GL_INVALID_VALUE, what value to what argument was invalid and why?).

It seems a bit strange that drivers wouldn't provide this information, even if in a completely custom way, but looked as I have, I sure haven't found any way to find it. If it really is that they don't, is there any good reason for why that is so?

Answer 1

Actually, there is a feature in core OpenGL that will give you detailed debug information. But you are going to have to set your minimum version requirement pretty high to have this as a core feature.

Nevertheless, see this article -- even though it only went core in OpenGL 4.3, it existed in extension form for quite some time and it does not require any special hardware feature. So for the most part all you really need is a recent driver from NV or AMD.

I have an example of how to use this extension in an answer I wrote a while back, complete with a few utility functions to make the output easier to read. It is written in C, so I do not know how helpful it will be, but you might find something useful.

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Here is the sort of output you can expect from this extension (AMD Catalyst):

OpenGL Error:
=============
 Object ID: 102
 Severity:  Medium
 Type:      Performance
 Source:    API
 Message:   glDrawElements uses element index type 'GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE' that is not
            optimal for the current hardware configuration; consider using 
            'GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT' instead.

Not only will it give you error information, but it will even give you things like performance warnings for doing something silly like using 8-bit vertex indices (which desktop GPUs do not like).

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To answer another one of your questions, if you set the debug output to synchronous and install a breakpoint in your debug callback you can easily make any debugger break on an OpenGL error. If you examine the callstack you should be able to quickly identify exactly what API call generated most errors.

Answer 2

Here are some suggestions.

• According to the man pages, glGetError returns the value of the error flag and then resets it to GL_NO_ERROR. I would use this property to track down your bug - if nothing else you can switch up where you call it and do a binary search to find where the error occurs.

• I doubt calling glGetError will give you a performance hit. All it does is read back an error flag.

• If you don't have the ability to test this on the specific hardware/software configurations those people have, it may be tricky. OpenGL drivers are implemented for specific devices, after all.

• glGetError is good for basically saying that the previous line screwed up. That should give you a good starting point - you can look up in the man pages why that function will throw the error, rather than trying to figure it out based on its enum name.

• There are other specific error functions to call, such as glGetProgramiv, and glGetFramebufferStatus, that you may want to check, as glGetError doesn't check for every type of error. IE Just because it reads clean doesn't mean another error didn't happen.