Texture shaders/programs

[OrangyTang]

An off-the-wall suggestion that may be redundant with newer ver.2 pixel shaders/fragment programs, but i'll suggest it anyway:
Instead of binding a texture in a normal way, allow a 'texture program' which allows custom code to be used instead of a texture lookup. Basically a user program that, given a texture u/v coord will generate a texture colour. Performed on the hardware so taking up much less memory, faster upload speeds and more varience in surface detail. Obvious uses would be perlin noise based texture equations.

[zeckensack]

Current hardware is not generally capable of this kind of thing.
ATI_fragment_shader/NV_register_combiners expose what can be done now on consumer cards, with 3DLabs' Wildcat VP already going a few steps further.
ARB_fragment_program, OpenGL2 and GL2 extensions will expose that sort of functionality in a uniform way, if the hardware is capable of doint it.

So the effort is already on the way

[Korval]

Actually, you don't need a specific "texture program"; current ARB/NV fragment program can do the job of user-defined texture generation. After all, the fundamental idea of a texture is "a function that takes 1-4 inputs that produces a color output." Whether that function is explicitly a "tex A" call that calls a program or a sequence of fragment program opcodes is irrelevant; the result is still the same.