texture-formats-tier1

This feature adds r16unorm, r16snorm, rg16unorm, rg16snorm, rgba16unorm, and rgba16snorm. It also expands capabilities of existing formats: signed normalized 8-bit formats gain attachment and blending support, while selected one- and two-channel formats gain storage access. The exact format-by-format matrix is in the linked specification.

Normalized formats are useful when values lie in a known range and benefit from evenly spaced precision, such as height fields, masks, and vector data. Additional storage formats can let compute shaders write compact images instead of padding every texel to four channels. Request texture-formats-tier1 at device creation; it also enables rg11b10ufloat-renderable.

Tier 1 is not blanket permission for every operation on every texture format. Its added storage capabilities cover read-only and write-only access; tier 2 adds read-write access for a specific set of formats. Keep a fallback using core formats, and validate the shader’s storage declaration and bind-group access mode against the format you select.