OpenGL ES 2.0 specifiying position attribute vec3 or vec4

Question

In the OpenGL ES 2.0 introduction, found here: http://www.webreference.com/programming/opengl_es/2.html a vertex shader is defined:

GLbyte vShaderStr[] =
   "attribute vec4 vPosition;   \n"
   "void main()                 \n"
   "{                           \n"
   "   gl_Position = vPosition; \n"
   "};                          \n";

The vPosition attribute is a four component vector.

Later in the text the application will compile the vertex shader, together with the fragment shader. With the glBindAttribLocation a handle to pass the applications vertex data to the shader is established:

// Bind vPosition to attribute 0
glBindAttribLocation(programObject, 0, "vPosition");

The 2 shaders are now linked and the program is ready to use.

The use case is this:

GLfloat vVertices[] = {0.0f, 0.5f, 0.0f,
                        -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f,
                        0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f};
...
// Load the vertex data
glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, vVertices);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(0);
glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3);

Which means:

• glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, vVertices) : pass the vertex data to the program, use location 0, each vertex has 3 components, type is float, no normalisation shall be used.

• glEnableVertexAttribArray(0) : The shader will use the passed data.

• glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3); : The shader will execute the code to draw a single triangle, using the first (and only) three vertices found in the specified array.

My Questions are:

• The vertex shader is expecting a four component vertex position (x,y,z,w), the program passes only three components (x,y,z) data Why is this working?

• The shader needs a vec4, the w-component must be 1 to work as expected. Which step is responsible for adding the w-component correctly?

Answer 1

See this answer: Can you use glVertexAttribPointer to assign a smaller vector to a larger one?

As mentioned in that post it appears in the gles specifications: http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/specs/2.0/es_full_spec_2.0.24.pdf
In section 2.8 of this document it says:

When an array element i is transferred to the GL by the DrawArrays or DrawElements commands, each generic attribute is expanded to four components. If size is one then the x component of the attribute is specified by the array; the y, z, and w components are implicitly set to zero, zero, and one, respectively. If size is two then the x and y components of the attribute are specified by the array; the z, and w components are implicitly set to zero, and one, respectively. If size is three then x, y, and z are specified, and w is implicitly set to one. If size is four then all components are specified.