Render OpenGL on background thread and still work with Cocoa Controls in Mac OSX

Question

I am working on a mac osx control that is OpenGL based. Currently I am using an NSOpenGLView and a CVDisplayLink to coordinate my rendering on a background thread. This works great, but I need to allow Cocoa controls to be displayed over this OpenGL based control.

I realize you can do this with putting your Cocoa controls in borderless windows, however, that doesn't seem like a very good workflow for my users.

Alternatively I can make the view layer-backed and I got that working, however I don't like rendering my OpenGL content on the main thread, sometimes it blocks the main thread when the frame-rate dips.

Are there any samples that show how to achieve the best of both worlds?

Yes. I am successfully rendering on a background thread with CVDisplayLink and NSOpenGLView. The problem is that I am not able to work with Cocoa controls over my NSOpenGLView. — user1968080, Jan 11 '13 at 17:14
Then what do you mean by `however I don't like rendering my OpenGL content on the main thread,`? — TheAmateurProgrammer, Jan 12 '13 at 01:01

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 10 '18 at 21:28

The background thread for rendering is completely irrelevant. You just need to enable layer-backing for the views and then the subviews/controls will be composited correctly on top of your OpenGL content. You can also use CAOpenGLLayer for more explicit layering with CALayers.

Render OpenGL on background thread and still work with Cocoa Controls in Mac OSX

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