Depth stencil view (DSV)

A depth stencil view provides the format and buffer for holding depth and stencil information. The depth buffer is used to cull the drawing of pixels that would be invisible to the viewer as they are occluded from view by a closer object. The stencil buffer can be used to cull all drawing outside of a defined shape.

There are a number of more advanced uses of stencil buffers beyond defining a rendering area. Stencil buffer values can be manipulated to give such effects as fades, silhouettes, decaling, dissolves, outlining, shadow volumes, and so on.

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