texture2d with bias without dependent texture read.

PowerVR Insider
1

Hi there, I’m looking for some clarification.



Is it possible to use the texture2(texcoord.xy,bias) without a dependent texture read being generated?



The fact the bias is added after the mip calculation lends me to beleive that using the bias param with always generate a dt-read.



At the moment, our engine has the bias param in all our shader so the bias can be adjusted at any point. I guess this will be leading

to a dt-read in every one of our shaders.



Many thanks,



Steve.


2

Could you expand a little about your use case? Are you setting the bias as a uniform?



Generally, it’s recommended to set the bias as a constant to avoid dependent texture reads. If you’re sure it you don’t need the bias on a particular platform, then avoid setting the bias parameter at all with a macro.

3

Hi there,



It’s for our iOS/Android/Steam game Combat Monsters.



During game-play the mip levels are fine. During the card view, the mip levels need biasing in order to get more detail.



Game view:

http://powerupgaming.co.uk/images/articles/combatmonsters-coverlarge.jpg



Card view (the characters animate, does not show the problem, but you get the idea):

http://android-france.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/combat-monsters-01.jpg



I’ve tried setting the bias as a uniform and also tried passed through as a varying as the texture co-ordinates z.



Both are reported as d-texture reads on the iOS profiler, I’m assuming this is true for GLES in general.



I’d rather not have a second set of fragment shaders with a different bias if possible.



It’s more of a general question, than platform specific. I guess I’m asking:



Assuming all platforms need variable mip biasing during the game, is there a d-texture read penalty?



Many thanks,



Steve.

4

The question needs to be a bit more platform specific. On PowerVR Series 5 hardware, performing a calculation on a texture coordinate means the texture and shading processor may not pre-fetch the texture data correctly, and the fragment shader is stalled waiting for the texture read.



On PowerVR Series 6 devices, the scheduler hides data fetches behind other computation tasks, which means dependent texture fetches would have negligible impact on performance and are not worth consideration on those platforms.