buffer usage while mapped

Hi,

I like to see a flag for glMapBufferRange that will allow the usage of this buffer while mapped. The use case will be almost the same as for AMD_pinned_memory (streaming buffers without overhead) but with less pitfalls imo.
The main difference to AMD_pinned_memory is the implicit memory mangement.

Solved AMD_pinned_memory pitfalls:

  • OS dependent alignment done by driver
  • Usage after free: The pointer will be invalid after the glUnmap call and the memory will be deleted when it isn’t needed any more by GL. glFinish isn’t needed any more
  • No dependencies to other drivers which may also do magic on this memory block

New issues:

  • Current content has to be read back to cpu ram without GL_MAP_INVALIDATE_BUFFER_BIT, also with GL_MAP_INVALIDATE_RANGE_BIT.
    -> Only done once in initialization
  • Using of cpu memory is slow
    -> Should only be used for streaming. So PCI-E is always the bottleneck

Markus

Something like this was added to OpenGL 4.4: ARB_buffer_storage