Tile-based texture mapping on graphics hardware

Abstract

Texture mapping has been a fundamental feature for commodity graphics hardware. However, a key challenge for texture mapping is how to store and manage large textures on graphics processors. In this paper, we present a tile-based texture mapping algorithm by which we only have to physically store a small set of texture tiles instead of a large texture. Our algorithm generates an arbitrarily large and non-periodic virtual texture map from the small set of stored texture tiles. Because we only have to store a small set of tiles, it minimizes the storage requirement to a small constant, regardless of the size of the virtual texture. In addition, the tiles are generated and packed into a single texture map, so that the hardware filtering of this packed texture map corresponds directly to the filtering of the virtual texture. We implement our algorithm as a fragment program, and demonstrate performance on latest graphics processors.