NVIDIA patent describes Infinite Resolution Textures

NVIDIA filed a patent for a technique that promises to enable the creation of infinite resolution textures. While 3D geometry can be sampled at any scale, texture maps are registered to the geometry at a particular scale. When these texture maps get sampled on resolutions much greater than the provided scales, like when you run old games on new hardware, this results in a lot artifacts. The new NVIDIA patent aims to solve this via a vector-based technique.

Looking back in time for a possible solution to be applied in the future, Nvidia comments that some of the oldest video games were vector-based rather than raster-based. It then observes that vector technology is still used in industries today where quality approximation is not acceptable, in fields such as illustration and computer-aided design.

...Back to Nvidia's patent and it suggests a method where the computer will generate "an infinite resolution texture acceleration data structure" and storing it in memory for the rendering process. I guess this could stand the test of time better than simple bitmap textures but isn't really 'infinite' in a way you can zoom in to an object in real-life using various microscope technologies.

Source: Hexus