Texture resizing?

[malibu43]

OK. What's the deal with resizing textures? I see people often recommending that those with slower computers (ie - me) resize 2048 x 2048 textures down to improve performance.

 

Does this still matter if you have texture quality set to medium or low? I believe that a "low" texture setting limits the texture sizes to 128 or 256, so does it matter if the original texture was 2048 x 2048? Does it still take the game longer to load the larger texture or something?

 

So, if I should be resizing textures, what free program will make this simple (I have lot's of 3rd party aircraft hanging around!). FWIW - I don't have MS Picture Viewer on my system.

 

Thanks!

[+Dave]

Use gimp but if you are reducing the texture quality it will help you.

[+FastCargo]

What Is shown in the sim engine is whatever is dictated in the MaxTextureSize listed in the relevant parts of the FLIGHTENGINE.INI file. However, what really matters is how much texture memory is taken up by the texture files. It is assumed that the textures are loaded in video memory and then dynamically resized by the sim for display. However, that means the GPU is using horsepower to resize. Also, it doesn't seem to do as good of a job as a dedicated graphics program such as Gimp or Photoshop.

 

In other words, if you resize the textures yourself you:

1. Use less texture memory

2. Use less GPU power

3. Get a better looking result

 

Now, if the sim resizes the textures before loading them into video memory, then resizing them yourself may not be worth the result.

 

FC

[malibu43]

Is there any program that will allow me to specify a directory and it will find and resize all of a certain file type in the directory, or do I have to do this one by one?

 

Going through NF4+ and SF2V Exp Pack is gonna be a hassle!

[+eburger68]

malibu43:

 

You might check out this free program:

 

http://www.xnview.com/en/xnview.html

 

It allows you to select multiple files within a directory and batch convert/resize them. Very easy and quick to use.

 

Eric Howes

[+Stary]

I recommend IrfanView for batch resizing -BUT- only bmp files, for tga ones you better use Gimp

[+PureBlue]

I can't find TK's actual post, but if I remember correctly, the textures were resized at load time (not dynamically in game)

The program i would suggest is the Faststone Image Viewer, it's free and you can do batch jobs of all sorts.

[+Stary]

but they still take the initial amount of memory at loading

[malibu43]

OK. So reducing textures may reduce initial mission load times, but not necessarily improve FPS in game.

 

Think I'll wait until I have a few hours with absolutely nothing else to do, then, before I tackle that.

Edited December 9, 2010 by malibu43