The Texture Extension

The Texture Extension

The texture extension, EXT_texture, allows you to select an internal format for textures. When you create a texture using OpenGL 1.0, you can only define it as having 1, 2, 3, or 4 components. The texture extension provides several additional predefined formats. You can indicate the following on a per-texture basis:

the number of components to store in texture memory
the internal image format (GL_RGB4_EXT and so on, see Table 6-1)

The extension also defines a robust method for applications to determine what combinations of texture dimensions and resolutions are supported. It also introduces a new texture environment: GL_REPLACE_EXT.

This extension is the foundation for other extensions discussed in this chapter.

Note: Some of the functionality of this extension was available in IRIS GL on RealityEngine.

Why Use the Texture Extension?
Using the Texture Extension
The Texture Extension Proxy Mechanism
Extended Functions