Overview:
Currently working on a project in Unity for iOS and Android, where at runtime we download and store images in PNG format for later use. When we need to we load these textures as well as some from a web server using Unity's WebRequestTexture and both file:// and https:// schemes respectively.
Problem:
The problem we are facing is that when we use the WebRequestTexture method the memory usage of the textures increases significantly.
Question:
Is there a way to potentially pre-compress the locally downloaded images into device compatible compressed formats, and then load them directly to the GPU without it increasing the memory size required?
If this is possible would using Texture2D.CreateExternalTexture allow us to then use these textures without further increasing the memory usage?