Passing data from GPU to CPU

I need a way to pass some numbers from GPU back to CPU. First I tried:

Image@ img =logTex.GetImage();
Color px = img.GetPixel(0,0);


It worked great for single pixel and I was able to pass four 8-bit numbers back into AngelScript. Problem is, If I try to read more pixels, performance will drop very fast. As I understand, code above stops whole pipeline (both CPU and GPU) for a moment to read a single pixel. And more pixels I read, the longer pipeline stays idle. Not cool.

I know, there should be a better way to do it. Copy image? I don’t mind it to lag a few frames, I just want to pass more data from GPU without stalling whole render pipeline.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.

Are you doing GetImage() for each pixel?

https://github.com/1vanK/Urho3DBitmapFontGenerator

https://github.com/1vanK/Urho3DBitmapFontGenerator/blob/master/Source/BFGenerator.cpp
see BFGenerator::CalcField() how send texture with packed data to shaders and calc heavy matematics on GPU
After it you always can use GetImage() for rendered Texture2D

p.s. I read the question carefully and do not understand why img.GetPixel() is slow, image already on CPU

No, here what I do for performance test:

Image@ img =logTex.GetImage();
Array px(256);
for(int i=0; i<256; i++)
{
px[i] = img.GetPixel(i,0);
}


and numbers I’m getting (update):
16 4.5ms
32 7ms
64 16ms
128 20ms
256 35ms

well, maybe I’m wrong, and it’s just AngelScrip does it slow. But since even smaller numbers affect frame time, I assumed it stalls whole pipeline.

I should probably try C++. (Oh no! )

This is surprisingly slow even for AS.

Hello again. So, I spent couple weeks learning C++. I added this code to to 10_RenderToTexture.cpp, it takes texture just rendered, copies it into image, and then converts image into Vector4 array.

texImg = new Image(renderTexture->GetContext());
texImg->SetSize(txSize, txSize, 4);
renderTexture->GetData(0, texImg->GetData());
for (int i = 0; i < txSize; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < txSize; j++)
texData[i][j] = texImg->GetPixel(i, j).ToVector4();
}


It works insanely fast, 256x256 10ms 512x512 30ms in Debug, 1024x1024 (million pixels) 25ms in Release.
Ad I guess 2k pixels (32x64) should cover all my needs and some more.

I now just need a way to pass it into AS without loosing momentum.