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I'm working on SAO (http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/SAOHPG12/) and I want to store my ambient obscurance term (a value between 0.0 and 1.0) in a texture.

When I did shadowmapping, I created my depth-texture as DXGI_FORMAT_R32_TYPELESS and the shader resoure view as DXGI_FORMAT_R32_FLOAT, however with this I want a DXGI_FORMAT_R8_TYPELESS format and a FLOAT equivalent, yet there appears to be none according to the docs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb173059(v=vs.85).aspx)

1) What texture/srv/rtv format should I use if I want to store/read/write 8-bit float values?

2) Does the format used really matter? Does directx do any behind-the-scenes alterations to the texture data? Is a DXGI_FORMAT_R8_UNORM treated differently from a DXGI_FORMAT_R8_SNORM for example?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ 8-bit floats would have an extremely low precision. Are you sure you want an 8-bit float? DXGI_FORMAT_U8_UNORM is what you want if you do indeed need an 8-bit value (and yes, that's different than an SNORM, in that the former maps [0,256) to [0, 1.0] while the later maps [-128,+128) to [-1.0,+1.0]). \$\endgroup\$
    – Sean Middleditch
    Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 22:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ for the purpose of storing a ambient obscurance term, perhaps R16 float is enough? \$\endgroup\$
    – KaiserJohaan
    Commented Oct 1, 2014 at 8:28

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The smallest single float supported by DirectX 11.x is DXGI_FORMAT_R16_FLOAT which requires Feature Level 10.0 or better hardware. The smallest single float supported by Feature Level 9.x is DXGI_FORMAT_R32_FLOAT.

If you can require Feature Level 10.0+ or better hardware, a better choice might be to use DXGI_FORMAT_R11G11B10_FLOAT or DXGI_FORMAT_R9G9B9E5_SHAREDEXP if you can live with the limitations of those formats.

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