How virtual textures work

(shlom.dev)

44 points | by betamark 1 day ago

4 comments

  • JayGuerette 16 hours ago
    A good portion of the world and Lenna herself have asked that image be retired.
    • groundzeros2015 14 hours ago
      “Good portion of the world” is probably a handful of people.

      Her full quote btw:

      “Once upon a time, I was the centerfold of Playboy,” says the former model in the new documentary Losing Lena. “But I retired from modeling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too.”

      • monocasa 14 hours ago
        Well, for instance, it's the official policy of the IEEE to not allow this image in new publications. And they're far from the only journal (or set of journals) that have this policy.
        • groundzeros2015 13 hours ago
          Of course. Most people don’t care and a few vocal ones do.
          • monocasa 13 hours ago
            As in most organizations that would know about it and come into contact with it.
            • groundzeros2015 13 hours ago
              I think my comment is true of the graphics programming/research community.
              • monocasa 11 hours ago
                Given that it's use is banned in most academic journals dealing with imaging/graphics, you'd be wrong.

                And as several journals have brought up in the banning, it's not even good at what it purports to be for these use cases. It's a pretty poor quality image to start off with due to being scanned to a digital file with 1970s technology.

                At this point the ones defending its continued use are the vocal minority on some weird anti-woke crusade that doesn't even make sense on technical grounds.

                • groundzeros2015 10 hours ago
                  You’re using vocal minority framing right now. When I care about it, I’m a weird crusader for caring and noticing. But then you organize a campaign to change it.

                  There is a large body of literature using these images so it’s helpful to have a comparison which is persistent through time and familiar.

                  > Given that it's use is banned in most academic journals dealing with imaging/graphics, you'd be wrong.

                  Critical thinking caps required for this one.

      • incanus77 13 hours ago
        Best replacement I've seen: https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/
        • tomovo 16 hours ago
          Now at least parts of it are paged out...
          • DiggyJohnson 16 hours ago
            Who is Lenna?
            • kikoreis 16 hours ago
              • _ache_ 14 hours ago
                A copyrighted image of a nude model elected for no obvious reason has a test image in the University of South California by some pervs and then used in a lot of papers as a test image.

                Or, a standard cropped image of a playgirl used in the field of image processing.

                • TGower 13 hours ago
                  "elected for no obvious reason" isn't quite right, as a test image for computer graphics it has regions of very high frequency detail and regions of very low frequency detail which make it easier to spot various compression artifacts, and it makes a good study for edge detection, with both very clear edges along the outline, but more subjective edges in the feathering.
                  • _ache_ 11 hours ago
                    It's redish. Ok it has a blur and details on the foreground but could have been any image with blurred background and a face.

                    "very low frequency detail", we are talking about a 512x512 picture here, it has low and high frequency details (FFT speaking) like most photos.

                    "Good for edges detection" doesn't mean anything. Like, is the image good for edge detection or the algorithm is good at detecting edges ? What does "subjective edges" even mean ? Does it mean hard to spot ?

                    That looks like technical reasons but it just noise. They literally grab a playboy magazine and decided it was well enough (and indeed, it wasn't that bad, yes). Still not professional. The message is "We have playboy magazines at work and we are proud of it".

                  • groundzeros2015 14 hours ago
                    It’s perverted now?
                    • monocasa 14 hours ago
                      It's literally cropped pornography.
                      • groundzeros2015 14 hours ago
                        Is a nude picture perverted?
                        • _ache_ 11 hours ago
                          No. That is not the question. The question is "do you hang out with an erotic magazine at work ?" and "Is it normal ?"
                          • groundzeros2015 11 hours ago
                            No I think the social context is inappropriate. However I do not think possessing or liking such a picture is perverted. I also do not thinking a cropped version of the picture which has no sexual content is inappropriate.
                          • monocasa 13 hours ago
                            [dead]
                    • Conscat 16 hours ago
                      The eponymous woman in the Playboy photograph.
                    • superb_dev 16 hours ago
                      Which image?
                    • direwolf20 17 hours ago
                      > Texture binds multiply. Draw calls explode. Bandwidth usage spikes. You spend more time feeding the GPU than rendering.

                      Is this AI?

                      • jayd16 16 hours ago
                        Its just a casual writing style, written like how you might describe it verbally to imply the list of ill effects goes on and on.
                        • Conscat 16 hours ago
                          This is a common rhetorical device for humans named parataxis.
                          • LoganDark 17 hours ago
                            Probably just Aspie, judging by some of their other writing (including their About page). I've seen Aspie writing misidentified as LLM output surprisingly often.
                        • socalgal2 16 hours ago
                          > The result was visually striking. Repeating tile patterns disappeared, and artists could paint unique detail across large environments without concern for reuse. The primary cost was not GPU throughput, but latency elsewhere in the system.

                          No, the primary "cost" was artists having to fill a world with unlimited textures instead of just filling memory and then having to make due.

                          The constraint of "limited texture memory budget" also puts a constraint on how much work the artists can do. Remove that constraint lets artists do unlimited work. It might sound like a plus because "freedom!" but it turns into a minus trying to actually ship on time and at budget.

                          I get that wasn't the point of the article's "cost", but thought it was worth mentioning.

                          • The pop-in and stuttering with RAGE was pretty bad. They finally dropped this method of virtual texturing in Doom Eternal.
                            • monocasa 11 hours ago
                              Time budgets still exist.

                              This just let you do things like many layers of baked in multi texturing in places where artists had previously ran into engine constraints.

                              Honestly, having to "make do" when your budget was full probably took more time trying to find neat hacks.

                            • alvinunreal 1 day ago
                              [flagged]