Curretly, I use glReadPixels in an iPad app to save the contents of an OpenGL texture in a frame buffer, which is terribly slow. The texture has a size of 1024x768, and I plan on supporting Retina display at 2048x1536. The data retrieved is saved in a file.
After reading from several sources, using CVOpenGLESTextureCache seems to be the only faster alternative. However, I could not find any guide or documentation as a good starting point.
How do I rewrite my code so it uses CVOpenGLESTextureCache? What parts of the code need to be rewritten? Using third-party libraries is not a preferred option unless there is already documentation on how to do this.
Code follows below:
//Generate a framebuffer for drawing to the texture
glGenFramebuffers(1, &textureFramebuffer);
glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, textureFramebuffer);
//Create the texture itself
glGenTextures(1, &drawingTexture);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, drawingTexture);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA32F_EXT, pixelWidth, pixelHeight, 0, GL_RGBA32F_EXT, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, NULL);
//When drawing to or reading the texture, change the active buffer like that:
glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, textureFramebuffer);
glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureId, 0);
//When the data of the texture needs to be retrieved, use glReadPixels:
GLubyte *buffer = (GLubyte *) malloc(pixelWidth * pixelHeight * 4);
glReadPixels(0, 0, pixelWidth, pixelHeight, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, (GLvoid *)buffer);