In computer games, using meshes with many triangles can slow down rendering, even if using a VBO.  It may be preferable to decimate (downsample) the mesh so that it has fewer triangles.



In a level of detail (LOD) system, one would use multiple versions of the surface.  When it is far away from the camera, the low resolution version would be sufficient.  Mipmapping is an example of LOD applied to textures.  Tesselation shaders can be helpful for this purpose.

High

Mesh polygon count