Bind pre rendered depth texture to fbo or to fragment shader?

Question

In a deferred shading framework, I am using different framebufer objects to perform various render passes. In the first pass I write the DEPTH_STENCIL_ATTACHMENT for the whole scene to a texture, let's call it DepthStencilTexture. To access the depth information stored in DepthStencilTexture from different render passes, for which I use different framebuffer objects, I know two ways:
1) I bind the DepthStencilTexture to the shader and I access it in the fragment shader, where I do the depth manually, like this

uniform vec2 WinSize; //windows dimensions
vec2 uv=gl_FragCoord.st/WinSize;
float depth=texture(DepthStencilTexture ,uv).r;
if(gl_FragCoord.z>depth) discard;

I also set glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) and glDepthMask(GL_FALSE)

2) I bind the DepthStencilTexture to the framebuffer object as DEPTH_STENCIL_ATTACHMENT and set glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) and glDepthMask(GL_FALSE) (edit: in this case I won't bind the DepthStencilTexture to the shader, to avoid loop feedback, see the answer by Nicol Bolas, and I if I need the depth in the fragment shader I will use gl_FragCorrd.z)

In certain situations, such as drawing light volumes, for which I need the Stencil Test and writing to the stencil buffer, I am going for the solution 2). In other situations, in which I completely ignore the Stencil, and just need the depth stored in the DepthStencilTexture, does option 1) gives any advantages over the more "natural" option 2) ?

For example I have a (silly, I think) doubt about it . Sometimes in my fragment shaders Icompute the WorldPosition from the depth. In the case 1) it would be like this

uniform mat4 invPV; //inverse PV matrix 
vec2 uv=gl_FragCoord.st/WinSize;
vec4 WorldPosition=invPV*vec4(uv, texture(DepthStencilTexture ,uv).r ,1.0f );
WorldPosition=WorldPosition/WorldPosition.w;

In the case 2) it would be like this (edit: this is wrong, gl_FragCoord.z is the current fragment's depth, not the actual depth stored in the texture)

uniform mat4 invPV; //inverse PV matrix 
vec2 uv=gl_FragCoord.st/WinSize;
vec4 WorldPosition=invPV*vec4(uv, gl_FragCoord.z, 1.0f );
WorldPosition=WorldPosition/WorldPosition.w;

I am assuming that gl_FragCoord.z in case 2) will be the same as texture(DepthStencilTexture ,uv).r in case 1), or, in other words, the depth stored in the the DepthStencilTexture. Is it true? Is gl_FragCoord.z read from the currently bound DEPTH_STENCIL_ATTACHMENT also with glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) and glDepthMask(GL_FALSE) ?

Answer 1

Going strictly by the OpenGL specification, option 2 is not allowed. Not if you're also reading from that texture.

Yes, I realize you're using write masks to prevent depth writes. It doesn't matter; the OpenGL specification is quite clear. In accord with 9.3.1 of OpenGL 4.4, a feedback loop is established when:

• an image from texture object T is attached to the currently bound draw framebuffer object at attachment point A

• the texture object T is currently bound to a texture unit U, and

• the current programmable vertex and/or fragment processing state makes it possible (see below) to sample from the texture object T bound to texture unit U

That is the case in your code. So you technically have undefined behavior.

One reason this is undefined is so that simply changing write masks won't have to do things like clearing framebuffer and/or texture caches.

That being said, you can get away with option 2 if you employ NV_texture_barrier. Which, despite the name, is quite widely available on AMD hardware. The main thing to do here is to issue a barrier after you do all of your depth writing, so that all subsequent reads are guaranteed to work. The barrier will do all of the cache clearing and such you need.

Otherwise, option 1 is the only choice: doing the depth test manually.

I am assuming that gl_FragCoord.z in case 2) will be the same as texture(DepthStencilTexture ,uv).r in case 1), or, in other words, the depth stored in the the DepthStencilTexture. Is it true?

Neither is true. gl_FragCoord is the coordinate of the fragment being processed. This is the fragment generated by the rasterizer, based on the data for the primitive being rasterized. It has nothing to do with the contents of the framebuffer.