Is it OK for a camera to see its camtex?

[Enjay]

Simple question that I should know the answer too - is it OK for a camera that is the source viewpoint for a camera texture to be in a position where the camera can "see" the camera texture that it is projecting too?

It doesn't seem to be a problem, so I guess there is something preventing infinite recursions, but I just wanted to check.

[Rachael]

Well technically what will happen is you will simply see the previous frame when the current one is rendered, so no, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The problem with infinite recursion would simply come from marking the texture as needing a refresh as it is being shown, but if it works now then that's not likely going to be an issue.

[Enjay]

OK, thanks, that gives me peace of mind.

I wanted the player to be able to see himself on a monitor but that, obviously, means that the camera needs to be able to see the player, and the player needs to be near the monitor.

I've actually managed to set it up so that most, maybe even all, of the camera texture is just out of view behind a wall as far as the camera is concerned. The player can see the monitor in its alcove, can't get right into the alcove so the camera can see the player but I don't *think* it can quite see the monitor.

[phantombeta]

Well technically what will happen is you will simply see the previous frame when the current one is rendered, so no, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The problem with infinite recursion would simply come from marking the texture as needing a refresh as it is being shown, but if it works now then that's not likely going to be an issue.

It also depends on how it's being rendered. It needs to be using a separate buffer for rendering, or it'll try to read from the same texture it's drawing to, which is undefined behaviour on all the hardware rendering APIs GZDoom supports, as far as I know.
It generally shouldn't crash, just result in garbage input, but since it's undefined behaviour, there's no guarantees.
If it's using a separate buffer, though (e.g., for double buffering), it should do exactly as Rachael described.

[Graf Zahl]

The rendering is directed to a framebuffer which only gets converted into a texture after rendering is complete.

BTW, the first camera to be found in Duke3D also points directly to a monitor where its view can be seen on.

[Ravick]

An old and never released map of mine uses a camtex in a computer monitor to show some content to the player, and, if the player continues to use the console, it eventually turns the player into the cam himself and he is still able to watch the monitor:

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This map is many years old now, and I never run into problems with that.

In older (can't rly tell which ones) versions of GZDoom, the view got rendered multiple times into the camtex. Current version seems to render it only twice and then render just black in place of the next smaller inner ones.