02561 - Computer Graphics - Worksheet 6, Part 2

The nearest filtering mode simply selects the texel closest to the texture coordinate and uses that. This creates a staircase effect for magnification and can create weird patterns for minification, though this is not present with the mipmaps.

The linear filtering mode uses a weighted average of the four closest texels. This removes the staircase effect and in part solves the weird patterns, but can make the image look blurry.

The different mipmaps modes are used when the when we reach a certain threshold for minifaction, where it then uses a precomputed lower resolution version of the texture. Here we have more control of how the texture should look and can customize the mipmaps to prevent minifaction artifacts. The mipmaps can also be used with either nearest or linear filtering.