On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:54:13 +0200 Paul Surgeon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Thursday, 28 October 2004 19:59, Lee Elliott wrote: >> What's the current consensus on texture sizes? I'm currently >> limiting my textures to 1024x1024 but I'd like to use larger >> textures if it would be acceptable. > > I'm in favour of larger textures. > Even my old 128MB Ti4200 sits with an almost empty bank of video RAM > when running FlightGear. > Even the original Geforce can handle 2048x2048 with the correct drivers!
Well, since someone should do it (just for discussion's sake), I'll
play the wet blanket here and say "be careful about texture sizes."
I have no doubt that your Ti4200/128MB isn't having to work too hard;
I have a 128MB Ti4600 and it's the same here. But a lot of people
have less powerful hardware. We can't support old hardware forever, to
be sure; but we don't want people who *could* fly a certain aircraft
to suddenly not be able to.
A big reason your video RAM isn't getting used isn't because texture
sizes are small, but simply because there aren't that many in use
at this point; and that's because of all that's out there to be done
in the modelling/scenery area. Imagine that we decide to go from using
one ground texture for a particular surface type to four (drawn from
randomly) to decrease the 'checkerboard effect'. Put a bunch of
airport buildings, signs, a fuel truck, etc. into the scene. Maybe a
bunch of aircraft in the area -- static for scenery + AI planes flying
around. Where will we be with memory needs then? I dunno. But I just
have this worry that jacking up the texture sizes to do planes with
higher resolution may come back to bite us later, when we find that we
can't have as much scenery, or as many planes in the scene, as we would
like.
Maybe this is an unwarranted worry.
-c
--
Chris Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(remove "snip-me." to email)
"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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