Does XNA support 1 dimensional textures

Question

Does XNA support 1 dimensional textures. And by 1 dimension texture I mean something like Texture1d not a Texture2d where one dimension is 1 (because of the 4096 limit)

Answer 1

As per my comment, SetValue(Vector4[]) does not work. However, you should be able to use a Texture2D to achieve what you are after.

You can map a one-dimensional index to a two-dimensional index using the following function:

x = index % width;
y = (index - x) / width;

Therefore you can simply perform a SetData(Vector4[]) on a Texture2D and map the indicies within the shader (make sure you use point sampling). If you use all the pixels in a 4096x4096 texture you will effectively have an array that can contain 16777216 values.

int ValuesStride = 4096; // a.k.a Width.
texture2D Values;
sampler2D ValuesSampler = 
sampler_state
{
  Texture = <Values>;
  Filter = POINT;
  AddressU = CLAMP;
  AddressV = CLAMP;
};

float4 PixelShaderFunction(float4 Position : POSITION0, float2 UV : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0
{
  var value = ArrayLookup(ValuesSampler, ValuesStride, 100);
  // ...
}

float4 ArrayLookup(sampler2D sampler, int width, int index)
{
  float2 coord = (float2)0;
  coord.x = index % width;
  // We don't need to subtract coord.x because of how integral math works.
  coord.y = asint(index / width);
  return tex2D(sampler, coord);
}

Answer 2

HLSL has a Texture1D but XNA doesn't. I know little about shaders but I suggest you start first checking if the included basic effect supports Texture1D. If so then you just need to store in a buffer then pass it to the effect. If not you have to implement it from the ground up.

Not sure if it does but I hope that helps.