Godot 3.2.4 has a first beta with 2D batching for GLES3

Despite the small version bump, Godot 3.2.4 will be quite big release for game developers wanting to squeeze out some more performance.

The first Beta release is out now, and the Godot team mentioned it's best to get in and start testing now to ensure your games and Godot as a whole is as good as can be when Godot 3.2.4 is released properly. With 3.2.3 now behind them which added in batching for GLES2, they're moving to ensure it's hooked up for GLES3 too.

Apart from the usual assortment of fixes, these are the major changes:

• Android App Bundle and subview embedding support.
• 2D batching for GLES3 (remember that we added it for GLES2 in 3.2.2), and improvements to GLES2's batching.
• A new software skinning for MeshInstance to replace the slow GPU skinning on devices that don't support the fast GPU skinning (especially mobile).
• FXAA makes a return

If you're not a game developer, this is probably like speaking another language. Originally, Godot was drawing up various parts of the graphics you see on an individual basis, meaning that each rectangle, polygon, line and so on added to the OpenGL overhead. To better take advantage of a GPUs power, batching pulls a load of it together to save on that performance. Want to know a bit more detail? You can see one of their original blog posts about it here.

While Godot 4.0 will bring with it Vulkan support, a lot of developers stick with the current version of a game engine for a long time, as moving and upgrading can cause all sorts of issues. So giving developers the most performance they can get in the current Godot is great. Godot 4.0 is also still quite some time away so it makes sense.