3DWorld (9/13)

From:Thomas Frieden
Date:21 Sep 2001 at 17:36:08
Subject:Re: [3DWorld] Re: Textures.

Hi,

Michal Wozniak wrote:

>But, why then I need to keep original texture memory, if it's
> copied into a bitmap? Why not allocating a bitmap at the begining,
> and then allow programmer to release memory. I know that when bitmap
> is allocated then graphics board software allocates a piece of fastram
> for it (to be stored in case of gfxram shortage), and tries to place it
>into
> gfxram. So why do we need this original buffer?
>

The original images are needed again as soon as a texture is removed
from the graphics board.

Remember that the memory on the graphics board is rather limited, so
when new textures are uploaded, other textures are removed from the
graphics board. But if you need the old ones again, it has to be
uploaded again. This is done automatically by Warp3D, so the original
images must still be present.

If the format is directly supported, there's only one copy in main memory.

Regards,



Thomas Frieden
Senior Developer, Hyperion Entertainment
ThomasF@hyperion-entertainment.com
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com