but with gl_PointSize in the vertex shader he could make it as large as he needs (within limit of his hardware's max point size) and still be able to shade it i

but with gl_PointSize in the vertex shader he could make it as large as he needs (within limit of his hardware's max point size) and still be able to shade it in the fragment shader as a sphere looking thing by using gl_PointCoord, a texture of a sphere and discarding some fragments where the texture is a certain threshold. I don't think opengl es has quads so he's using two polygons per square running the vertex shaders 4 times per square. But the difference is probably real small that I might be useless optimization. Was just an idea as I was reading the first part of the post.