OpenGL® buffers are blocks of memory used to store information for quick access without recalculation. They can be optimized for specific types of data and stored in fast memory, such as on a graphics card. Framebuffers are commonly used for display, while vertex buffers hold frequently accessed information.
OpenGL® buffers are areas in computer memory that are used to store sequences of information so that they can be accessed very quickly and easily without the need to recalculate the data each time. Although, as in normal computer programming, OpenGL® buffers are basically just consecutive blocks of allocated computer memory, OpenGL® itself actually structures buffers within a program by defining the type of information that will be held within the buffer so you can use certain optimizations. There are several types of OpenGL® buffers including framebuffers, pixel buffers, and vertex buffers to name just a few. One of the important features of buffers in OpenGL® is that they can be stored in areas of memory where accessing the information inside the buffer can be faster than normal. The amount of usage expected for an OpenGL® buffer can help determine where the buffer is actually stored, with usage defined by declaring the buffer as static, dynamic, or stream.
One benefit of using OpenGL® buffers is that they can be located in memory that is accessed very quickly. Important types of buffers, such as framebuffers, can actually be placed directly into the memory of the graphics card used. This means that information can be passed directly from the buffer to the graphics processing unit (GPU) without having to travel from one physical hardware card to another. Moving raw information, such as a pre-rendered screen inside a framebuffer, to another memory location without any processing is a technique known as blitting, and it’s one of the fastest ways to move information into memory.
There are several types of OpenGL® buffers, although each is really just a block of memory. One of the most used is called a framebuffer. A framebuffer contains the information needed to display the current frame on the display device. The information within a framebuffer is ordered in the same way as the memory used to control what the monitor displays. This means that if a framebuffer is on a graphics card, the image can be projected onto the screen almost instantly, even if it takes some time to render the scene in the buffer first.
Other types of OpenGL® buffers, such as a vertex buffer, can hold entire sequences of information. These types of buffers are used to hold sequential blocks of information that may need to be accessed or changed many times per second. Also, OpenGL® buffers themselves can often be passed as arguments to functions that can take advantage of the sorted state of the buffer and perform computations very quickly.
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