So far, we only used PNG images. However, let's see if there are any other texture formats in iOS that would better fit our purpose. Spoiler: there are. Leaving the brash remark aside, we are going to analyze which texture formats fits our purpose best.

The following table shows the pirate ship image in different file formats. Let's compare its file sizes:

When we load a PNG file, what happens internally? The image gets decompressed when it's being loaded—at the expense of the CPU. The same goes for other conventional image formats such as JPEG. Once the image is decompressed, it becomes a texture.

PVR is a texture format specifically optimized for iOS devices or for PowerVR GPUs used on all iOS devices, to be more precise. When loading a PVR image, for example, it will decode the image directly on the GPU instead of the CPU.

PVR includes...