DirectX Visualizer
3D Solutions
01 April 2009
©2005-2009 Philips Electronics Nederland B.V.
13 of 26
The depth trigger condition can be used to tell the Visualizer at what point in the rendering process
the Z-buffer contains the depth of the 3D scene that should be shown to the user. It selects one call
to IDirect3DDevice9::Clear based on its parameters, the number of times clear was called before for
this frame and properties of the active render target (color buffer) and depth stencil (depth buffer).
Currently the depth trigger condition can only be based on calls to IDirect3DDevice9::Clear, as
indicated by the “cl:” prefix, but this may be extended in the future.
To simplify determining the number of times Clear should be called before extracting the depth
information, the DepthBufferPass related options were created. It allows you to use a key to
temporarily modify the count part of the depth trigger condition. Once the right depth information has
been extracted while running the application, the log file can be used to determine the most suitable
depth trigger condition. Appendix A shows how to determine a proper value for
DepthTriggerCondition.
Option name
Option name
Option name
Option name
Possible
Possible
Possible
Possible
values
values
values
values
Default
Default
Default
Default
value
value
value
value
Description
Description
Description
Description
DepthTriggerCondition
string
undefined
A string specifying the condition under which to
grab depth information from the Z-buffer. The
default is to grab the depth information at the end
of a frame when SwapBuffers is called.
DepthBufferPassDownKey key
undefined
Key to select an earlier call to Clear to trigger on
DepthBufferPassUpKey
key
undefined
Key to select a later call to Clear to trigger on
This string must be the string “cl:” followed by a comma-separated list of conditions in the order they
appear in the table below, for example:
DepthTriggerCondition=cl:n=2,c=0x0000FF00,z=1.0,rtw=1600,rth=1200
Figure 3: example showing format of depth trigger condition string
The following table explains the possible conditions and their values. The ‘n’ used in the description of
several conditions refers to the value filled in for <positive integer>.
