Immediate mode rendering is a style for application programming interfaces of graphics libraries, in which client calls directly cause rendering of graphics objects to the display. It does not preclude the use of double-buffering. In contrast to retained mode, lists of objects to be rendered are not saved by the API library. Instead, the application must re-issue all drawing commands required to describe the entire scene each time a new frame is required, regardless of actual changes. This method provides the maximum amount of control and flexibility to the application program.
Although drawing commands have to be re-issued for each new frame, modern systems using this method are generally able to avoid the unnecessary duplication of more memory-intensive display data by referring to that unchanging data in the relatively short drawing commands.
See also
- Display list
- Retained mode, the opposite of immediate mode
- Scene graph
