VBOs for 2D

[zacs7]

G'day,

Well, most of my books start with teaching glVertex*() and so-forth, only to mention in later chapters that they're deprecated in favor of VBOs.

However, upon researching VBOs it appears not all cards support them -- well the older ones don't.

So my question is, should I be using VBOs for simple (low performance) 2D tile-like games? The only thing I'm explicitly using card memory for is textures.

Thanks
Zac

[coldviper]

glBegin(), glEnd() and glVertex*() are the immediate mode and it is so slow because of the function overhead.

I tried loading a heightmaps with 522,422 triangles on my 3D engine a while ago with vertex array only and it runs at 52fps. With VBO, it runs at 132fps.

So, I guess it really depends on how heavy your program is. Why don't you just check if the card supports VBO? If so, use VBO otherwise, use vertex arrays.

Coldviper

[zacs7]

Well, thanks for the reply. I plan on having about 1000 or so triangles on screen at a time.

But I shall do what you recommended with VBOs :-).

Thanks again.