Actually, GEM sort of already does this, but not all the way. If you load the _exact_ same image (this means the exact same file/path name), then the pix_image has a cache system which means that it is only loaded into the computers memory once. However, each pix_image still sends its own copy down to the gfx card.
You could use a single pix_image/pix_texture with separator to do this...I have done it a lot in the past.
The reason that pix_image doesn't share the actual texture data is that you can modify the pixel data with other pix objects...pix_image doesn't actually send the texture data to the gfx card, pix_texture does.
Later, Mark
============================ = mdanks@stormfront.com = Lead Programmer PS2 = http://www.danks.org/mark ============================
-----Original Message----- From: umläute [mailto:zmoelnig@iem.mhsg.ac.at] Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 1:39 PM To: Mark Danks Cc: pd-list@iem.mhsg.ac.at Subject: Re: Gem and texture size
i have noticed some times ago, that when i use a huge number of sperate textures, at a specifique point the CPU-load increases by numbers -- this is, of course, due to the lack of memory of my grafx-card
but:: since i only used few *different* texture-images (par example: only 1 single image, that is textured on let's say 128 geos), i guess there could be a way to tell the grafx-card to reserve memory only for one (or "few") image(s). so there would be no need to access the "slow" main memory. How ?
mfg.fasd.ar hannes