VBOs for 2D

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

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

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.