OpenGL® ES 2.0 Programming Guide

Appendix A. GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES

GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES is an optional vertex data format supported by OpenGL ES 2.0. The extension string that implements this vertex data format is named GL_OES_vertex_half_float. To determine whether this feature is supported by an OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation, look for the string name GL_OES_vertex_half_float in the list of extensions returned by glGetString(GL_EXTENSIONS).

The GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES vertex data type is used to specify 16-bit floating-point vertex data attributes. This can be very useful in specifying vertex attributes such as texture coordinates, normal, binormal, and tangent vectors. Using GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES over GL_FLOAT provides a two times reduction in memory footprint. In addition, memory bandwidth ...