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API Inspector

When using the Frame Debugger feature of Linux Graphics Debugger, you may wish to do a deep dive into a specific draw call, in order to analyze your application further. To do this, go to the Frame Debugger menu and select API Inspector. The API Inspector view will open.

API Inspector Navigation

There are three different categories of API Inspector navigation.

1. The Pipeline Section

The first category is laid out like a "virtual GPU pipeline." Note that the control is pinnable, if you wish to have it constantly open, or you can unpin it to conserve space. This pipeline section of the API Inspector consists of the following:

Vtx Spec (Vertex Specification) — State information associated with your vertex attributes, vertex array object state, element array buffer, and draw indirect buffer.
Transform — Transform state, including viewports, clip distances, etc.

Shaders (VS, TCS, TES, GS, FS, CS) — The various shader pages display all of the constant buffers, shader resource views, and input/output parameters, as well as links to the source code and other shader information.

VS (Vertex Shader)	Vertex shader state, including attributes, samplers, uniforms, etc.
TCS (Tessellation Control Shader)	Tessellation control shader state, including attributes, samplers, uniforms, control state, etc.
TES (Tessellation Evaluation Shader)	Tessellation evaluation shader state, including attributes, samplers, uniforms, evaluation state, etc.
GS (Geometry Shader)	Geometry shader state, including attributes, samplers, uniforms, geometry state, etc.
FS (Fragment Shader)	Fragment shader state, including attributes, samplers, uniforms, etc.
CS (Compute Shader)	All of the shader resource and unordered access views and constant buffers bound to the Compute Shader stage, as well as links to the source code and other shader information.

On the shader pages, there is an icon on under the Linked Shader State section; clicking this button will create a new row on the scrubber that highlights where in the scene that particular shader is used.

XFB (Transform Feedback) — Transform feedback state, including object state and bound buffers.
Raster (Rasterizer) — Rasterizer state, including point, line, and polygon state, culling state, multi-sampling state, etc.
Pix Ops (Pixel Operations) — State information for pixel operations, including blend settings, depth and stencil state, etc.
FB (Framebuffer) — State of the currently drawn frame buffer, including the default frame buffer, read buffer, draw buffer, etc.

2. Object and Pixel State Inspectors

The object and pixel state inspectors section of the API Inspector consists of the following:

Textures — Details about all of the currently bound textures and samplers, including texture and sampler parameters.
Images — Details about all of the images currently bound to the image units.
Buffers — Details about all of the bound buffer objects, including size, usage, etc.
Program — Information about the currently bound program object and/or pipeline program pipeline object, including shaders, active uniforms, etc.

For information on how to dynamically edit a shader from the Program page, see Dynamic Shader Editing.

Pixels — Current settings for pixel pack and unpack state.
Queries — The Queries view has two available options: Active Queries, which displays the queries that are active for the current events and their results; and Conditional Render, which shows the results for a conditional render.

3. Miscellaneous

The miscellaneous screen contains additional information such as shader limits, implementation dependent values, transform feedback limits, and various minimum/maximum values.