Really interesting slide about how the latest OpenGL features can massively improve CPU performance.
It includes:
- A super fast way to map buffers. You map a buffer once and can then modify it while the GPU is using it. All writes are immediately flushed to the GPU. I bet someone coughRivencough might be interested. ^^
- More CPU efficient texture management using sparse textures. You create a sparsely allocated texture array, meaning only the parts that are actually committed use any VRAM. You can then stream in and out textures of this array. Just a single bind to get access to all textures the game needs.
- Other ways of increasing batch sizes to reduce draw call overhead.