LWJGL Quad VS VBO

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hey, I’ve started using lwjgl and I’ve figured out two things about it:
1. I have almost no idea what VBOs are and what their benefits are.
2. Long paragraphs with complicated looking code (may not actually be complicated but long paragraphs exaggerates complication of the code) make me lose focus very quickly.

So, while I’m trying to piece things together please tell me which I should be spending most of my effort towards. I don’t want to spend three days learning Quads and company while I could sped five days learning VBOs and get a better result.

P.S: I understand Quads
P.P.S: Thanks for any replies

#2

First off, there’s no such thing as a quad in LWJGL. A quad is short for quadrilateral, and is just a geometric shape. You may be looking for the term immediate mode, or something like that.

VBOs are beneficial when pushing large amounts of static geometry to be rendered, as all the data is stored in GPU memory (I think, someone can confirm this?). I believe they are beneficial for static geometry because physics and the such are performed on the CPU, but since static never moves (or rarely moves), we don’t need to calculate anything on the CPU, so we just send the data straight over the bus to the GPU. As for their actual use, they are far speedier than immediate mode/display lists, and are the modern way of doing things.

If you want a good tutorial on them, search for SHC on this forum and look up his Vertex Buffer Object tutorial. As a side note, VBOs aren’t actually a thing in OpenGL as a Buffer Object is simply a way to hold data. So be prepared if people yell at you for calling them vertex buffer objects! They are simply buffer objects.

#3

Wow I knew that I was lost but I didn’t know that I was THAT lost. Thanks for setting me straight. :-\ please forgive my lack of knowledge.

I got “quad” from this tutorial on the lwjgl website. The tutorial is called “the Quad” so I just assumed.

Thanks for reply though, I will go with VBOs or just Buffer Objects for my rendering

#4

@Opiop65 You are right.

Although I’ve never heard people yell for calling an OpenGL buffer used for storing vertex info a VBO, you raise an interesting point. Namely why are VBOs called VBOs when there is no reference to that anywhere in the documentation. They are OpenGL buffers and their target is GL_ARRAY_BUFFER. No mention of vertices anywhere and yet everyone calls them VBOs. I’m actually quite interested. If anyone knows, please do reply.

@Kingroka123 You shouldn’t ask for forgiveness for lack of knowledge. If everyone knew everything then the world would be a very boring place - seriously imagine what that would be like. Scary.

#5

Thank you for mentioning my tutorial.