What the study found
The study found that variable-rate texture compression using JPEG can be feasible for real-time rendering on modern GPUs. It also found that JPEG can maintain significantly better quality and compression rates than BC1, and can outperform or compete with ASTC depending on the image type.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors suggest this matters because variable-rate compressed image formats such as JPEG have not been used much in real-time rendering due to requirements like random access to individual texels (single texture pixels). The findings indicate that sophisticated variable-rate compression schemes are feasible on modern GPUs, even in VR (virtual reality).
What the researchers tested
The researchers investigated the feasibility of variable-rate texture compression on modern GPUs using JPEG and compared it with the GPU-friendly fixed-rate compression approaches BC1 and ASTC. Using a deferred rendering pipeline, they identified the subset of blocks needed for a given frame, decoded those blocks, and colorized the framebuffer's pixels.
What worked and what didn't
JPEG performed well in this setup, despite requiring about 0.17 additional bits per pixel. The JPEG rendering pipeline increased rendering duration by less than 0.3 ms on an NVIDIA RTX 4090. Compared with BC1, JPEG gave significantly better quality and compression rates, and compared with ASTC it either outperformed or competed depending on the image.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe detailed limitations beyond the added bit-per-pixel overhead and the comparison setup. The results are reported for the tested rendering pipeline and hardware, so the available summary does not show how widely they generalize beyond those conditions.
Key points
- JPEG-based variable-rate texture compression was found to be feasible for real-time rendering on modern GPUs.
- The approach required about 0.17 additional bits per pixel.
- JPEG achieved significantly better quality and compression rates than BC1.
- Depending on image type, JPEG outperformed or competed with ASTC.
- On an NVIDIA RTX 4090, the rendering pipeline added less than 0.3 ms.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- JPEG textures show feasible real-time GPU rendering
- Authors:
- Elias Kristmann, Markus Schütz, Michael Wimmer
- Institutions:
- TU Wien
- Publication date:
- 2026-04-25
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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