Optimized wavelet-based texture representation and streaming for GPU texture mapping

Texture compression is an important tool in real time texture mapping on several levels. Besides from increasing sampling performance due to cache efficiency and lower memory requirements, it can significantly decrease texture loading times. In bandwidth constrained situations, a texture streaming system is not always able to load the required texture data in time, either stalling the visualization or forcing the use of a placeholder texture. In this paper we propose a wavelet-based texture representation and streaming system which optimizes for maximal visual quality within bandwidth and real time constraints.