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Asynchronous texture loading ?

Started by uto314 Dec 1, 2005 at 5:46 PM 2 replies 1.2k views

Original Post

Dec 1, 2005 at 5:46 PM

Hi, I'm wondering if there is a common way to load texture into the graphics hardware (glTexImage2D) in a asychrone way. For instance if I know that at time T I'll need a texture to be accessible, I'd like to start transfering the data at T - t to not slow down the frame rate of the application. My idea is to use a specialized thread that cares only about the textures management, but if someone knows a simplest way that would be greaaat :) Thanks.

bluntman

Dec 2, 2005 at 8:56 AM

Well you can load bits of the texture at a time using glTexSubImage2D, so you just need to decide how much loading you can do for time t, then calculate how early you need to start loading based on the size of the texture.

Kitt3n

Dec 2, 2005 at 9:57 AM

Start a thread with have a mutex-protected queue of files to read.
Use signals to let the thread run or stop when no files in the queue.

Main thread posts a filename + a callback-function-ptr, thread will
wake-up and start reading in a vector and call the callback function
when if finishes reading the file, passing the data it read.

The callback has to handle this somehow (interpret data or whatever),
remember that the 'data you gave to the callback is only valid during
the callback, so don't store a pointer to it or sth)...

Regards

uto314

Author

uto314

Dec 2, 2005 at 7:56 PM

Thanks for the reply,
the thread option is pretty much what I will do.
Cool.
-u.

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