Thanks to Vulkan, 2D in Godot 4.0 will receive acceleration, many internal improvements and optimizations, for a better experience. Changes in memory allocation strategy and internal simplification in drag call logic make it much more efficient to manually call thousands of draw () functions from a node's _draw () call.
Many of these improvements will also accelerate the GLES3 and GLES2 back-ends. All 2D shadows and light textures use a single atlas, resulting in improved performance.
Also in Godot 4.0, the new type of CanvasTexture texture was introduced. This new type of texture can be used in any node or resource instead of ordinary textures, allowing more complex 2D lighting and shading.
2D also brings the possibility to have 2D directional lights and shadows, thanks to the new DirectionalLight2D node.
Signed distance fields (or SDFs) are one of the new fashionable algorithms in 3D graphics. Starting with Godot 4.0, they are also supported for 2D.
For the future, Gilles Roudiere is working on a new 2D tilemap system and an editor that will overcome most current limitations.