Vlad Erium ๐ฏ๐ต (@ssh4net)
2025-10-10 | โค๏ธ 157 | ๐ 22
Variable-Rate Texture Compression: Real-Time Rendering with JPEG
Elias Kristmann, Markus Schรผtz, Michael Wimmer
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08166 Code (BSD, CC, etc): https://github.com/elias1518693/jpeg_textures
Abstract: Although variable-rate compressed image formats such as JPEG are widely used to efficiently encode images, they have not found their way into real-time rendering due to special requirements such as random access to individual texels. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of variable-rate texture compression on modern GPUs using the JPEG format, and how it compares to the GPU-friendly fixed-rate compression approaches BC1 and ASTC. Using a deferred rendering pipeline, we are able to identify the subset of blocks that are needed for a given frame, decode these, and colorize the framebufferโs pixels. Despite the additional โผ0.17 bit per pixel that we require for our approach, JPEG maintains significantly better quality and compression rates compared to BC1, and depending on the type of image, outperforms or competes with ASTC. The JPEG rendering pipeline increases rendering duration by less than 0.3 ms on an RTX 4090, demonstrating that sophisticated variable-rate compression schemes are feasible on modern GPUs, even in VR.
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