Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-05-06 Thread Thomas Albrecht
Heiko, Emilian,

thanks for your answers! 

@Heiko: The wiki article correctly describes the textranslate method. What 
puzzled me was that it says the previous, two-file solution would no longer 
work. Well, apparently it does here...

http://flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11870#p123517

@Emilian: I wasn't aware of that lightmap effect, thanks for the heads-up! It 
would certainly suit better here.

Cheers,
Tom


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Emilian Huminiuc
On another note, for a case like the village house presented in the wiki I 
would suggest another aproach:

Better make the windows separate faces, and just give them emission at night 
with the material animation.  (a couple of extra vertices are way less 
resource hungry compared to a 256x256 part of a texture ;) ).
Switching the whole texture is good for big buildings that have illuminated 
facades, not just the windows. And that would better be achieved with the 
lightmap effect (which can use a lower resolution lightmap compared to the main 
texture), combined with the emission method for windows and other features 
where that's needed. That would make a better usage of textures and reduce the 
needed resources.

Again just my o.o2RON
Emilian.

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Emilian Huminiuc
On Saturday 30 April 2011 15:05:58 Heiko Schulz wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > Hmm, that depends. If those textures should be displayed
> > all the time (like a
> > livery), then yeah, I agree, one big texture is better than
> > many smaller ones,
> > also depending on your texturing needs. On the other hand,
> > if you're not
> > displaying half the texture most of the time, I think
> > that's wasted VRAM, that
> > could be freed for another texture of the same size. This
> > might seem just a
> > bit of wasted memory, but when you have 10-15 different
> > buildings with such
> > textures things start to add up, and you'd be using as much
> > memory as for
> > 20-30 different buildings, and where you have a detailed
> > village you could have
> > two or more.
> > 
> > Just my o.o2RON on the matter :P
> > Emilian
> 
> Yes, interesting thought, I understand. But I always thought that the
> process of loading and unloading textures settles down the perfomance and
> that'y why it is better to have them only loaded once and keep them in
> VRAM.
> 
> But maybe this only true when you not use any .dds-textures. I guess with
> .dds-textures  it would make sense to have them then seperated.
> 
> Cheers
> Heiko

Performance is one thing, VRAM available is another. When you reach the VRAM 
limit you get in trouble and suffer a major performance hit. (See the 
.dds&clouds threads here, the major cloud redrawing visible on some machines 
due to VRAM getting exhausted). With twice as big textures, you get to that 
limit twice as fast, thus you can display only ~half the models until you hit 
the limit.  

.dds textures help in different ways(less VRAM used for the same pixel size, 
faster loading due to embedded mipmaps, thus reducing the stutering noticed 
when one new texture gets loaded, etc..), but the same reasoning above can be 
applied to them, too.

Emilian

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Heiko Schulz
Hello,


> > 
> Hmm, that depends. If those textures should be displayed
> all the time (like a 
> livery), then yeah, I agree, one big texture is better than
> many smaller ones, 
> also depending on your texturing needs. On the other hand,
> if you're not 
> displaying half the texture most of the time, I think
> that's wasted VRAM, that 
> could be freed for another texture of the same size. This
> might seem just a 
> bit of wasted memory, but when you have 10-15 different
> buildings with such 
> textures things start to add up, and you'd be using as much
> memory as for 
> 20-30 different buildings, and where you have a detailed
> village you could have 
> two or more.
> 
> Just my o.o2RON on the matter :P
> Emilian
> 

Yes, interesting thought, I understand. But I always thought that the process 
of loading and unloading textures settles down the perfomance and that'y why it 
is better to have them only loaded once and keep them in VRAM.

But maybe this only true when you not use any .dds-textures. I guess with 
.dds-textures  it would make sense to have them then seperated. 

Cheers
Heiko


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Emilian Huminiuc
On Saturday 30 April 2011 14:21:23 Heiko Schulz wrote:
> @Emilian:
> According to Tim Moore, FGFS's graphic specialists it is recommended to
> have large texture files, instead many smalls.
> 
> See also here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:_Improve_Framerates
> 
> Cheers
> Heiko
> 
Hmm, that depends. If those textures should be displayed all the time (like a 
livery), then yeah, I agree, one big texture is better than many smaller ones, 
also depending on your texturing needs. On the other hand, if you're not 
displaying half the texture most of the time, I think that's wasted VRAM, that 
could be freed for another texture of the same size. This might seem just a 
bit of wasted memory, but when you have 10-15 different buildings with such 
textures things start to add up, and you'd be using as much memory as for 
20-30 different buildings, and where you have a detailed village you could have 
two or more.

Just my o.o2RON on the matter :P
Emilian

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Heiko Schulz
Hello,

> Thomas Albrecht wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > I also tried the textranslate method, but when I put
> the day/night
> > textures, say van.png and van_LIT.png each 256 x 256),
> into one file (512
> > x 256) and make up an .xml as described in the wiki,
> both day and night
> > textures look distorted in FG.
> > 
> > I assume the mapping specified in the .ac is no longer
> correct when I
> > change the size of the texture file? I have no
> experience with UV mapping
> > though.
> > 
> > Any ideas?
> > Tom
> You would have to remap the respective faces to use just
> half of the texture. 
> Otherways they use the whole texture and what you see as
> distorted is in fact 
> both day and night displayed at once.
> Using separate files induces a slight delay as the night
> texture is loaded, and 
> it's mipmaps get generated but might help with memory
> usage, as you're using 
> only half the videoram than with the big two-in-one.
> 
> HTH
> Emilian.
> 

@Tom: 
The article in the wiki is outdated. Indeed nighttextures with textranslate are 
working in GIT since a whole while. If it works without textranslating, like 
described in the wiki-article, I can't tell.
Never tried yet. 

With textranslate you have to change the UVmap. Means, when you have put night 
and day textures beside (x-direction) into one texture file, the UVMap has to 
be reduced in size (in x-direction) exactly the half.
You may want to take a look into FGdata/Models/Airport to see how it works.

@Emilian:
According to Tim Moore, FGFS's graphic specialists it is recommended to have 
large texture files, instead many smalls.

See also here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:_Improve_Framerates

Cheers
Heiko



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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Night textures: two files vs. textranslate

2011-04-30 Thread Emilian Huminiuc
On Saturday 30 April 2011 13:15:30 Thomas Albrecht wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I also tried the textranslate method, but when I put the day/night
> textures, say van.png and van_LIT.png each 256 x 256), into one file (512
> x 256) and make up an .xml as described in the wiki, both day and night
> textures look distorted in FG.
> 
> I assume the mapping specified in the .ac is no longer correct when I
> change the size of the texture file? I have no experience with UV mapping
> though.
> 
> Any ideas?
> Tom
You would have to remap the respective faces to use just half of the texture. 
Otherways they use the whole texture and what you see as distorted is in fact 
both day and night displayed at once.
Using separate files induces a slight delay as the night texture is loaded, and 
it's mipmaps get generated but might help with memory usage, as you're using 
only half the videoram than with the big two-in-one.

HTH
Emilian.

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