> I would have guessed that loading these images would be an infrequent > hit making file size a relatively small factor, but if the system is > continually swapping them out and reloading them for some reason, that > might not be so.
*shrugs* It's reasonable to set things up in such a way that a texture is loaded once, then when you ask for it a second time the rendering system realizes 'hey, I have this already somewhere', so it should not matter. On the other hand, my experimental finding is that if I load 1000 cloudlets with 512x512 texture resolution, it may take, say, 5 seconds for them to appear in the scenery. If I load 1000 cloudlets with 1024x1024 texture resolution, it takes then ~20 seconds - although there are only 20 distinct types of cloudlets, so after the first 20 the time to load textured objects should not really depend strongly on the number I request - and yet it does. I don't understand any of these findings - they suggest to me that the texture is somehow loaded every time I request an object to appear in the scenery, regardless if there is an identical copy of the object already present. The total time to load a configuration is really proportional to (number of objects) x (texture size of a single object) > Would the environment settings give us the option to use textures of > different sizes? Some users with high-end rigs might like the 2048 > option, though I expect that would murder my system. ;) I had the help of Patrice Poly to experiment with the hires textures - I don't really know if I can manage on my own. It's on the limit of what my digicam can deliver, so every photograph has to be perfect (it's much easier to start with a hires image and go a factor 2 down in resolution for the final texture - that hides processing artefacts). If in addition I can't run it on my system, then I probably won't do it. At this point, I'm just trying to do the strategic planning what is worth pursuing in the mid-future. If I can run hires textures, then I'd probably implement them as an option. > You might consider the dxt format. dxt needs some additional work to > prepare, and has a few caveats to its use, but the dxt format is > compressed when loaded into video RAM. The format is often used in > gaming, and can do a lot to conserve video memory and possibly improve > performance. You might find it worth exploring, especially for this > dedicated operation. Is there any example in Flightgear that is made with dxt textures which I could study and try to understand? Thanks, * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Software Download: Index, Search & Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
