Rich Geldreich announces the completion of XBC7/XUBC7, a prototype GPU supercompression format for BC7 textures. It uses a predictive transform codec combining DPCM, DCT, and H.264-style intra prediction operating on BC7's parameter space. The format supports a continuous quality dial from ~1.5 bpp lossy to bit-exact lossless BC7, with multithreaded encode/decode via independently-coded stripes. A single XBC7 file can transcode to BC7, ASTC 4x4, ETC1, and plain RGBA. Claude Fable 5's analysis describes it as an intra-only video codec whose 'pixels' are BC7's parameter space, drawing lineage from JPEG, H.264/HEVC intra coding, and JPEG-LS. The next step is integrating transcoders into the Basis Universal library.
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