On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Club Neon wrote:
> I can feel this falling from the GGI topic very fast...
>
> > > I am currently doing research on other ways to extremely compress images
> > > (which allow for lossless modes), but that will take a while.
> > Have you investigated wavelets?
> > As I understand them, they get incredible compression, and the quality
> loss
> > isn't very bad.
>
> The key part of that sentence is "quality loss", even if it isn't very bad
> there is still some.
Get used to it, because texture compression in hardware is here to
stay. People need to get used to machine-independent programming, and one
aspect of that is that you have to give up pixel-accuracy and lossless
compression. It is worth it, though, because you gain enormous
flexibility and portability.
> Also the important part is they aren't pixel accurate.
> Sure the longer you spend decoding the wavelet the closer you get to the
> orginal pixels. The problem with this is you can't be assured that when you
> are storing data for a sprite it will be decoded the same every time, by
> every machine.
I got news for you, then: you have already lost that guarantee to
hardware texture filtering, which blends depending on lighting
characteristics and geometry.
> Might not be so bad for non-tiled textures wrapped around
> polygon solids, actually for organic things they might not tile to bad
> either especially if they were used in multi-layered textures were the seams
> can be obscured some.
Precisely. Everyone is doing compressed textures.
> > I've played a bit with them, if you're curious:
> > http://students.washington.edu/eeyem/old/wavelet/
> > That's only 1d compression, but 2d compression is not much more difficult.
> > You'd need a book/website, anyway.
Aren't wavelets patented?
Jon
---
'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in
becoming one with God.'
- Scientist G. Richard Seed
