   What are multiple Vertex Streams used for?
  What are the practical uses of using multiple vertex streams? Does it reduce bandwidth to the GPU or something else entirely? I just don’t really understand what they can be used for.   
Here is one example from GPU Gems that focuses on the use of multiple vertex streams for a resource manager.   ;  Hardware instancing would be the most obvious use, I render most objects with some kind of hardware instancing [ grass, trees/foliage, debris, particles, imposters, etc ]You bind your model's VB to stream 0, and the per-instance data to stream 1.There are some examples in the DirectX SDK. - Dan   ;  I'd go further and suggest that proper instancing is why they were invented.I'm sure there are other uses you could contrive, but instancing is what it's all about. You should try it - and lol when you see how many of the same object you can render without dropping your fps.   ;  Thanks guys!I've seen it around several times and always wondered what sort of benefit or purpose it had.Now I need to go dig into instancing :D   ;Quote:Original post by RubiconI'd go further and suggest that proper instancing is why they were invented.Multiple streams appeared in D3D8, while instancing only appears in D3D9, so that's definitely not the case. Still, I agree that instancing is the most obvious use.One way I used multiple streams (in the old days) was for tweening.   ;  You can use the multiple stream feature for terrain rendering as well.Your first stream has X,Y coordinates and contains all vertices necessary for a 2d grid of one terrain sector. In a second stream you have the actual height stored. This way you can save quite some graphics memory since the first stream is the same for every terrain tile.   ;  Thanks marcjulian, your description made the concept 'click' in my head.So basically, one of their uses could be to reduce duplicate data sent per vertex, by splitting the data into two or more streams?   ;  Thanks for that.  I was wondering about it the other day too!   ;In this Intel-sponsored feature, Orion Granatir looks at the Intel Atom processor, already shipped in more than 40 million devices, and ways to inlock its potential for gaming.  View the full article