cannot draw my triangle with OpenGL depth test enabled - opengl

Question

I write a program to draw a simple triangle and I use VAO、VBO and GLSL shaders. The result is the following:
But if I enable depth test using：
glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST)
nothing appears in the window.
Now I post some code of my program:
float positionData[] = {
-0.8f, -0.8f, 0.0f,
0.8f, -0.8f, 0.0f,
0.0f, 0.8f, 0.0f };
float colorData[] = {
1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f,
0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f,
0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f };
void initVBO()
{
// Create and populate the buffer objects
GLuint vboHandles[2];
glGenBuffers(2, vboHandles);
GLuint positionBufferHandle = vboHandles[0];
GLuint colorBufferHandle = vboHandles[1];
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,positionBufferHandle);
glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,9 * sizeof(float),
positionData,GL_STATIC_DRAW);
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,colorBufferHandle);
glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,9 * sizeof(float),
colorData,GL_STATIC_DRAW);
glGenVertexArrays(1,&vaoHandle);
glBindVertexArray(vaoHandle);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(0);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(1);
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, positionBufferHandle);
glVertexAttribPointer( 0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, (GLubyte *)NULL );
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, colorBufferHandle);
glVertexAttribPointer( 1, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, (GLubyte *)NULL );
}
void display()
{
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
glBindVertexArray(vaoHandle);
glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES,0,3);
glBindVertexArray(0);
glutSwapBuffers();
}
My question is : why I cannot draw the triangle after enabling depth test?

Answer 1

There are multiple (types of) buffers used when rendering, typically. One is the color buffer, which contains the pixel data in some pixel format (IE: RGB with 8 bits for each color channel). Another typical buffer used is the depth buffer. Depth testing and writing to the depth buffer are two different things. Depth testing checks the depth value from a pixel against the depth value of the associated pixel(s) in the depth buffer and decides whether to accept or reject the pixel/fragment. Depth writing actually writes that value to a buffer, such as the depth buffer.
Your program probably writes to the depth buffer and test the depth buffer, but you never clear out the depth buffer, so it believes that, even though the color buffer has been cleared, that there are already things written to it that are at/in front (or whatever is configured) of the pixels you're trying to write to, so it rejects them.
Clear your depth buffer each frame, typically. You do this by passing the GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT flag to glClear.

Answer 2

You need to explicitly clear the depth buffer, too:
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT |
GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT)