Whats the difference between bilinear and trilinear?

[aylmer]

Whats the difference between bilinear and trilinear?

[lobe]

Bilinear Filtering:
In 3D graphics--especially with games--you don't want a graphics cards to grab texture maps from memory and simply write them on your computer screen: as the polygons drawn onscreen got bigger, they would take on a blocky or chunky look. To improve the ability to scale 3D graphics, you need to filter them. Bilinear texture filtering is a sophisticated technique that averages the four adjacent texels or interpolates, thus creating a new texel. Games require at least this level of texture filtering; beware of benchmarks that don't quote either this method or a better one.


Trilinear Filtering:
Like its less sophisticated cousin, bilinear texture filtering, trilinear filtering is a complex technique used by 3D graphics cards to make movement through rendered landscapes realistic even in fast-moving games.

in simplier terms, you use Bilinear when you have Video cards that meet the minimum requirement of the game specs, and Trilinear when your Vid card is way better like say... Radeon 9800
hope that helps