How virtual textures work

(shlom.dev)

22 points | by betamark 11 hours ago ago

17 comments

  • socalgal2 2 hours ago

    > The result was visually striking. Repeating tile patterns disappeared, and artists could paint unique detail across large environments without concern for reuse. The primary cost was not GPU throughput, but latency elsewhere in the system.

    No, the primary "cost" was artists having to fill a world with unlimited textures instead of just filling memory and then having to make due.

    The constraint of "limited texture memory budget" also puts a constraint on how much work the artists can do. Remove that constraint lets artists do unlimited work. It might sound like a plus because "freedom!" but it turns into a minus trying to actually ship on time and at budget.

    I get that wasn't the point of the article's "cost", but thought it was worth mentioning.

  • direwolf20 3 hours ago

    > Texture binds multiply. Draw calls explode. Bandwidth usage spikes. You spend more time feeding the GPU than rendering.

    Is this AI?

    • jayd16 2 hours ago

      Its just a casual writing style, written like how you might describe it verbally to imply the list of ill effects goes on and on.

    • Conscat 2 hours ago

      This is a common rhetorical device for humans named parataxis.

    • LoganDark 3 hours ago

      Probably just Aspie, judging by some of their other writing (including their About page). I've seen Aspie writing misidentified as LLM output surprisingly often.

  • JayGuerette 3 hours ago

    A good portion of the world and Lenna herself have asked that image be retired.

    • groundzeros2015 18 minutes ago

      “Good portion of the world” is probably a handful of people.

      • monocasa 3 minutes ago

        Well, for instance, it's the official policy of the IEEE to not allow this image in new publications. And they're far from the only journal (or set of journals) that have this policy.

    • tomovo 2 hours ago

      Now at least parts of it are paged out...

    • DiggyJohnson 3 hours ago

      Who is Lenna?

      • _ache_ an hour ago

        A copyrighted image of a nude model elected for no obvious reason has a test image in the University of South California by some pervs and then used in a lot of papers as a test image.

        Or, a standard cropped image of a playgirl used in the field of image processing.

      • kikoreis 2 hours ago
      • Conscat 2 hours ago

        The eponymous woman in the Playboy photograph.

    • superb_dev 2 hours ago

      Which image?