What are the differences between a Frame Buffer Object and a Pixel Buffer Object in OpenGL?

Question

What is the difference between FBO and PBO? Which one should I use for off-screen rendering?

Answer 1

FBO is more modern, and tends to perform better. If your card supports it, you'll want to use it, as it avoids the call to wglMakeCurrent().

PBO is supported on older hardware, so works in more places, but is slower and doesn't support as much (usually doesn't support FSAA, etc).

Answer 2

I would read VBOs, PBOs and FBOs:

Apple has posted two very nice bits of sample code demonstrating PBOs and FBOs. Even though these are Mac-specific, as sample code they're good on any platoform because PBOs and FBOs are OpenGL extensions, not windowing system extensions.

So what are all these objects? Here's the situation: