问题
The OpenGL SuperBible discusses texture buffer objects, which are textures formed from data inside VBOs. It looks like there are benefits to using them, but all the examples I've found create regular textures. Does anyone have any advice regarding when to use one over the other?
回答1:
According to the extension registry, texture buffers are only 1-dimensional, cannot do any filtering and have to be accessed by accessing explicit texels (by index), instead of normalized [0,1] floating point texture coordinates. So they are not really a substitution for regular textures, but for large uniform arrays (for example skinning matrices or per instance data). It would make much more sense to compare them to uniform buffers than to regular textures, like done here.
EDIT: If you want to use VBO data for regular, filtered, 2D textures, you won't get around a data copy (best done by means of PBOs). But when you just want plain array access to VBO data and attributes won't suffice for this, then a texture buffer should be the method of choice.
EDIT: After checking the corresponding chapter in the SuperBible, I found that they on the one hand mention, that texture buffers are always 1-dimensional and accessed by discrete integer texel offsets, but on the other hand fail to mention explicitly the lack of filtering. It seems to me they more or less advertise them as textures just sourcing their data from buffers, which explains the OP's question. But as mentioned above this is just the wrong comparison. Texture buffers just provide a way for directly accessing buffer data in shaders in the form of a plain array (though with an adjustable element type), not more (making them useless for regular texturing) but also not less (they are still a great feature).
回答2:
Regular textures are used when VBOs are not supported.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6281109/texture-buffer-objects-or-regular-textures