Reforj developer 4J Studios unveils Rixels: modified pixels that reduce texture memory requirements by 98%

They're using vector graphics as textures. And of course they patented it.

The article is sort of sparse on details, are they directly rasterizing these textures from the vertex shader (or custom compute shader rasterizing)? Or just rasterizing to image buffers and sampling those like normal textures?

If the former, seems like you could do some neat stuff with LOD by removing/retopo-ing/recoloring the vector shapes as they get further from the camera.

I don't know that it would work as well for other art styles, but damn, what a way to solve their issue. Cutting down things to 23 vector shapes. Creative if nothing else.