   A question about "depth texture - z buffer - RT"
  HI !I was wondering if there is a method to obtain a texture containing the z values (like the zbuffer) without rendering to a new render target texture.Honestly, I'm confused by myself about this question :D!All I know is that there exist this so called "depth texture" in DX, and that now, in my deferred renderer, I'm writing two times the z values. The first time to the device Z buffer, and the second time to a RT texture. Is it possible to avoid it, in order to get more speed ? Or, what the hell does one mean with "depth texture" ???? :D!THANKS !   
  I don't know how this works in DirectX but in OpenGL you can just sample the depth texture as usual in the GLSL shader using texture2D() function and it will give you correct depth values.   ;  In DirectX 9 you are not able to access the hardware depth buffer, well, you are, but it's not supported and there is no quaranty what format the value you get back will be in, generally they will be nonsense, so you have to render depth out to a seperate target.In DirectX 10+ I believe you have full access to the depth buffer, so no need for the extra depth pass.The depth pass isn't particularily expensive anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.   ;  Thank you guys !   