It depends on the GPU. Even higher-end GPUs can’t handle textures bigger than 8192, but I don’t recommend going larger than 4096 for the really big texture map, although you should avoid sizes that big in general. Of course, always calculate how much video memory it occupies (a 4096x4096 RGBA texture will occupy 4096 * 4096 * 4 bytes, which is 67 MB already. An 8192x8192 texture takes up 268 MB of texture memory, uncompressed!), and see if it’s feasible for the GPUs you are targeting.
The “hick-up” is probably Panda having to rescale your 7200x7200 texture to the next power of two size, 8192x8192. You should really start using power-of-two sized textures, especially with sizes this big.
No, no… That was my PC having a “hick-up”, not P3D. Saving a 7200x7200 texture to my hard drive does that (or the program used during the saving). I never used that size for P3D because it was too large and did not follow the traditional size rule.
Tomorrow, I think I’m going to just use smaller textures that reapeat for the base ground texture and then use some alpha textures added through the texture stages for added detail. I hope that works a lot better, because my graphics still appear too “pixeled” on close up with the 2048 sized texture mat I use now.
Since I’m creating a RTS style game where the camera can zoom in and out, a player will no doubt want to get a close up of the characters and action. The texture mat looks fine when zoomed out, but horrible when zoomed in.
So, I hope using texture stages will be the answer. I can control the texture repeat of each texture, so that will help a lot. It will get some what complicated…the process of bases texturing, adding other texture blends on the fly and also adding a UV map layout in the texture stages as well (for moutains).
Usually, what people do is apply a repetitive texture on a small scale, but also apply a texture on a bigger scale that combines with the repeating texture to provide a result that doesn’t look too repetitive but still quite detailed.
I was able to get good resolution, but at a price of fps drop when zooming out. I know textures repeating a lot can do it, but that’s the only way to keep the detail small enough to look correct on close ups and not too big.
Should I reduce texture size to increase fps? I’m using 512x512 textures for the added details. They are png format, since I need the alpha preserved.
Getting good resolution on realistic textures sizes is hard. I’m more concerned about the ZoomIn look since the ZoomOut will be limited, and would only be used to get a better view of the overall city (or area).
Here is the ZoomOut look:
By markjacksonguy at 2012-02-14
Here is the ZoomIn look:
By markjacksonguy at 2012-02-14
Pay no attention to the objects, those are test objects. The terrain will have rocky features later on, as well as other missing graphical parts like trees, shrubs, etc.
The base texturing is the concentration right now.
The ZoomIn looks really nice, given the fact so much detail is still missing (my opinion anyway).
Forgot to mention… If the texturing looks a little dark, that’s because the Sun is rising. It is early morning, in-game.
