FlatBuffers is an efficient cross platform serialization
library for games and other memory constrained apps. It
allows you to directly access serialized data without
unpacking/parsing it first, while still having great
forwards/backwards compatibility.

Features:
 - Access to serialized data without parsing/unpacking
 - Memory efficiency and speed. The only memory needed to
   access your data is that of the buffer.
 - Flexible. Optional fields provides forwards and backwards
   compatibility.
 - Tiny code footprint. Small amounts of generated code, and
   just a single small header as the minimum dependency.
 - Strongly typed. Errors happen at compile time.
 - Convenient to use. Generated C++ code allows for terse
   access & construction code.
 - Cross platform code with no dependencies.

Protocol Buffers is indeed relatively similar to FlatBuffers,
with the primary difference being that FlatBuffers does not
need a parsing/unpacking step to a secondary representation
before you can access data, often coupled with per-object
memory allocation. The code is an order of magnitude bigger,
too. Protocol Buffers has neither optional text import/export
nor schema language features like unions.