Overview

Descriptor indexing is a very useful feature to utilize in Vulkan. Descriptor indexing is for managing how resources are accessed.

vulkan-cpp is in need for getting abstractions around the vulkan API for getting descriptor indexing working. The way the API will work is going to take quite a bit of experimentation.

Reasons to use Descriptor Indexing

• Minimize need for CPU to re-bind resources that are already available to access. (Bindless textures, etc)
• Batching draw calls by having one single giant descriptor that can be reused across multiple draw-calls if needed without having to re-bind those same resources everytime.
• Goal with descriptor indexing is to move from a per-object/per-material bindings to a per-frame or persistent global bindings
• Re-binding has its own sets of cost dealing with high resources, when you have to record state when doing vkCmdBindDescriptorSets.

What does descriptor indexing enable?

• Allows for updating descriptor sets IF it is not in use.
• update-after-bind mindsets, such as if you have newly loaded textures, you can update without needing to bind those descriptors.

To enable descriptor indexing

• VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing

API Design

TBD