This technology preview, using OpenGL, demonstrates a way to implement Ptex (
http://ptex.us/) in real time, making one of the latest film industry techniques practical for use in games. Ptex greatly simplifies the process of texture mapping and is already supported in a number of industry standard tools. Because Ptex also naturally eliminates seams, techniques such as vector displacement are easily enabled without need for manual seam fixup. Real-time Ptex per-primitive resolution control and the more efficient packing relative to traditional methods allow for higher quality textures, yet with very little computational overhead. Partially resident textures (PRT), accessible through an OpenGL extension, also allow for simpler Ptex addressing methods by enabling variable-sized slices in texture arrays, an addressing method which would otherwise be far too costly in memory usage.