[JAVA3D] what's the value of texture by reference?

[Michael P. McCutcheon]

I'm just in the beginning stages of working with textures.  However, i keep seeing this "texture by reference" thing popping up.   My question is, what does using a texture by reference give you that using a texture in the "normal" way does not?   Is there some performance advantage to using texture by reference?   If I have a bunch of objects and I want to update each objects texture for every frame, which method is better?  Is one faster for switching textures on an object each frame?   Is texture handling going to be any different under Java3D 1.3?   Mike