Patent ID: 7423653

Claim:
A method of managing the display of a large number of graphical textures wherein not all the textures are visible at any one time, the method comprising the machine-implemented steps of: creating and storing one or more pools of high-resolution textures in memory; displaying the textures on quads of polygons in a virtual three-dimensional environment on a computer display; wherein one or more of the textures display informational content and deliver informational content to a viewer of the three-dimensional environment, wherein one or more of these textures can be viewed at a high level of detail, wherein one or more of the textures have approximately similar dimensions, and wherein a viewer can interact with one or more of the textures; wherein an arrangement of the textures is defined in one or more sources, and wherein the informational content associated with the textures may derive from one or more remote sources; and wherein the virtual three-dimensional environment comprises one or more channels adjacent to and defining virtual spaces between the polygons and wherein one or more of the textures displaying informational content are aligned along the channels, further comprising having one or more lower resolution textures and determining whether to display a lower resolution texture in place of a high-resolution texture based on one or more criteria; further comprising the step of downloading a low-resolution texture corresponding to one or more of the high-resolution textures via a network; further comprising the steps of defining a priority ordering for the download of low-resolution textures and downloading low-resolution textures according to that priority.