After taking a look at the current state of the BMP loader I decided it might be worth a shot at reimplementing that part. For example: the current loader doesn't properly handle 1- and 4-bit files, incorrectly loads 16-bit files as intensity-alpha (they are RGB555), is full of dead code, and generally not in very good shape.
Attached is my re-implementation for review.
I've checked it against the test images from http://wvnvaxa.wvnet.edu/vmswww/bmp.html and models that use BMP files.
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