Some applications, especially systems for distributed OpenGL rendering, would like to have a fast way of copying their depth buffer into a color buffer; for example, this allows the depth buffer to be scanned out, allowing downstream compositing operations.

To do this operation in unextended OpenGL, the app must use ReadPixels of DEPTH_COMPONENT data, followed by DrawPixels of RGBA data. However, this typically will not provide adequate performance.

This extension provides a way to copy the depth data directly into the color buffer, by adding two new options for the "type" parameter of CopyPixels: DEPTH_STENCIL_TO_RGBA_NV and DEPTH_STENCIL_TO_BGRA_NV.

Requires NV_packed_depth_stencil.