METHODS OF AND APPARATUS FOR USING TEXTURES IN GRAPHICS PROCESSING SYSTEMS

摘要

A graphics virtual texturing system in which textures stored in a storage medium of a host system are divided into respective pages that are then loaded into a local memory of a graphics processing system for use. Each page of a graphics texture has an associated fade factor value that can be set by an application that is to use the texture to control the contribution that the page will be used to make to any texturing result that is generated using the texture page in question. The graphics processing system then controls the contribution of texture data from a texture page to texturing result data to be generated in accordance with the fade factor value associated with the texture page in question. This allows texture paging to be done in a more visually pleasing manner than just a binary “page-is-here”/“page-is-not-here” switch.

主权项

1. A method of using a texture in a graphics processing system, the method comprising:
associating respective sub-regions within a graphics texture to be used by a graphics processing system with respective fade factor values that can be set by an application that is to use the texture to control the contribution that the sub-region will be used to make to any texturing result that is generated using the texture sub-region in question.