R3X0 can only support 2048x2048?

It stll comes down to what speed and resolution can you realistically play at as well. If the Nvidia cards end up running games slower, then it doesn't really matter how pretty the wall textures are, as long as they are at an acceptable level.

So, how many games that arn't a shooter use textures that big? When it comes down to it, performance while playing is more important, isn't it? Even if there are certain cases that MAY use textures bigger than 2048x2048, how many of these are there? Seriously, a total of what, 8 levels worth of a shooter isn't worth making an issue of this IMO. Now, if games were comming OUT that needed or supported those bigger textures, AND they were game-play critical, that would be one thing, but that's not the case here. When playing, do you stare at the walls, or are you too busy to really care?
 
Re: Re: R3X0 can only support 2048x2048?

Re: Re: R3X0 can only support 2048x2048?

TheMonkeyBoyz said:
I have to admit, the textures in the full game of UT2003 do look pretty impressive.
The demo had low-quality textures, but the full game seemed to rock.

What texture size has UT2003 been using?
Click to expand...

It's using many different sizes, but the most common seems to be 512x512 and 1024x1024 if you browse a little in the editor. Don't think I've every seen anything larger than 1024x1024 there.
 
m$-MaNiAC said:
Will the R420 support 4096x4096 or higher?

I played Unreal & Quake3 S3TC levels, and those textures were 8192x8192... is not possible to use S3TC with the PS/2 emulators?

BTW. Does anybody know were to find those Q3 S3TC levels again... i have lost them, and would like to have them again.
Click to expand...

There's no hardware that supports 8192x8192, so I'm quite sure you're wrong on that. Aren't you confusing it with maybe map size?


Edit: Downloaded a level and looked at the textures and it's 512x512 and 1024x1024 mostly. Nothing higher than that.
 
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TheMonkeyBoyz said:
Is it just a matter of density? Or are environments getting so big inside of games that
2048x2048 textures are really needed?

I mean - that is a HUGE piece of graphical real estate! If you run at 1024x768 you
cannot see the entire texture at one time. Is it that having such a large texture
simply helps continuity and detail as you move through and/or past an area?

I'm not certain I understand the full need for such large textures given the resolutions
that we run games at currently.

Must be missing something fairly obvious, I reckon'.
Click to expand...

If a texture is going to cover an area of say 512x512 on screen, it's not going to help to use a 2048x2048 texture. The hardware will still choose the 512x512 mipmap, so there won't be any visual difference to using a 512x512 texture. Only when you get close enough to the surface, so that the it's large enough on the screen are you gonna see the extra detail.
 
Humus said:
If a texture is going to cover an area of say 512x512 on screen, it's not going to help to use a 2048x2048 texture. The hardware will still choose the 512x512 mipmap, so there won't be any visual difference to using a 512x512 texture. Only when you get close enough to the surface, so that the it's large enough on the screen are you gonna see the extra detail.
Click to expand...

That makes more sense.

Best I could see would be a 1:1 correlation, but in most cases, if they used a huge
texture like that, it would be "shrunk" to fit the object, thus losing a bit of clarity
in the process, I would think.

Kind of like how Win has the ability to TILE or STRETCH the background on the desktop.
TILE lets you see it as the texture (image) was originally designed to be seen, while
STRETCH adjusts the texture to fit the available space, right?
 
Humus...

Is it possible for to create a demo that uses 2048x2048 textures?

So that we can see the difference between the default used, and the possible used.
 
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Was having some troubles in getting the s3tc levels to run... but i got it..

Instructions updated

http://www.labtop.com/~thund3r/pub/q3/maps/dmm-s3tc/

[update] Faster mirror
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm1.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm2.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm3.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm4.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm5.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm6.zip
ftp://ftp.edome.net/online/kartat/dmmq3dm7.zip
[/update]
Instructions:
0. Only works on version 1.15, and only works with modded exe
1. Install Quake 3(1.15)
2. Copy the exe to the 'x:\Q3' folder
3. Copy the maps to the 'x:\Q3\baseq3' folder
4. Download the opengl driver from Catalyst 3.2 (or you will get blank textures)
5. Copy the atioglxx.dll to the 'x:\Q3' folder
6. Goto the 'Q3' folder
7. Klik on the 'dmmq3.exe' file to start the modded Quake 3.
8. Enter the Console by pressing '~'
9. Enter then 'Devmap dmmq3dm1'

List of availabel maps: Thanks to 'Thunks0'
Asunder - dmmq3dm1
-The Crossroads - dmmq3dm2
-Lonely Planet - dmmq3dm3
-Last Rites - dmmq3dm4
-Face to Fate - dmmq3dm5
-Bad Blood - dmmq3dm6
-Conflicting Interests - dmmq3dm7

Will post some screenshots asap..

Will try to find out at what res its displayed.
 
m$-MaNiAC said:
Humus...

Is it possible for to create a demo that uses 2048x2048 textures?

So that we can see the difference between the default used, and the possible used.
Click to expand...

Well, of course it's possible. Not sure it would be very interesting though. They will look the same until you get very close in which case the higher res will have more detail and the low res gets more blurry.
 
TheMonkeyBoyz said:
Kind of like how Win has the ability to TILE or STRETCH the background on the desktop.
TILE lets you see it as the texture (image) was originally designed to be seen, while
STRETCH adjusts the texture to fit the available space, right?
Click to expand...

Sort of, yes.
 
Originally posted by Humus Sort of, yes.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Trying to break it down into simpler language that is easier to digest.

I know this - Quake 3 Arena and UT2003 have shown that static textures can
look every bit as awesome as just about anything people may want to do with
on the fly bump mapping, except for perhaps how those surfaces might react
to fancy lighting effects/shadows.

I would rather have nice, clean static textures with depth maps applied to simulate
bump mapping than have a game that has crawling textures with live bump mapping
and the troubles that seem to come with it. Flickering textures and what not that freak
when lighting is applied at the same time AA is, for instance.

I still look at the textures in Quake 3 Arena and am very impressed by how well they
did those. They set the bar pretty darn high, at least in my eyes.
 
So far, Silent Hill 3 is the only game I know of that uses textures up to 2048x2048. I can only run the game at 2048X1024, with a bit of lag here and there.
 
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Try loading up " Lonely Planet - dmmq3dm3 ". Every time I try and load that level a ton of textures are missing. The only ones not are the metal floor,brush metal,the lava,some lights and the yellow,black striped one. Could it be that the textures on that map are beyond 2048x2048 and thats the reason there not loading? Or is it somthing else?
 
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Hi Thunks0,

I see this too... i wil try load up an older opengl driver.

Other maps work fine...

see what happens..

Tried it... don't know whats the problem...

Maybe somebody from the Catalyst team can tell what has changed in the OpenGL driver.
 
Trunks0 said:
Try loading up " Lonely Planet - dmmq3dm3 ". Every time I try and load that level a ton of textures are missing. The only ones not are the metal floor,brush metal,the lava,some lights and the yellow,black striped one. Could it be that the textures on that map are beyond 2048x2048 and thats the reason there not loading? Or is it somthing else?
Click to expand...

There are no textures larger than 1024x1024 included, so it's not that.
 
Used the DirectX texture tool to view the .DDS textures in the PK3 files.

and Humus is correct the largest textures are 1024x1024...

But i'm certain, that i have read the the S3 Savage based graphics adapters were able to use 8192x8192 textures when S3TC was enabled...

Maybe the Unreal (not UT) S3TC levels used 8192X8192 textures.

The geforce graphics adapters support 4096x4096 textures, Quake3 does look better on these systems (Tried it on a Quadro2 system)
 
m$-MaNiAC said:
Used the DirectX texture tool to view the .DDS textures in the PK3 files.

and Humus is correct the largest textures are 1024x1024...

But i'm certain, that i have read the the S3 Savage based graphics adapters were able to use 8192x8192 textures when S3TC was enabled...

Maybe the Unreal (not UT) S3TC levels used 8192X8192 textures.

The geforce graphics adapters support 4096x4096 textures, Quake3 does look better on these systems (Tried it on a Quadro2 system)
Click to expand...

Are there any links that mention the 8192x8192 textures of which you speak?

I just can't imagine how that would work...

Thanks
 
For normal usage, with current hardware, 4096x4096 textures are overkill and impractical. Even for "rendering to texture" like that used by Silent Hill 3, 2048x2048 is sufficient, considering that few people use screen resolutions higher than 1600x1200, to which the final image would be scaled down.

The only place that I can think of that Ati's 2048x2048 limitation comes into play is with Pete's OpenGL2 Plugin for ePSXe. Because the playstation uses lots of tricks for special effects and can choose to display any area of its VRAM, it is best to render all the contents of its VRAM to a pixel buffer. Then the correct area can be passed to the video card's back buffer.

The psx has only 1 MB of VRAM. However, in order to get a higher resolution image, Pete's plugin renders a power of two multiple of this VRAM. As far as I know, in the plugin, high=multiplied by 2, very high=multiplied by 4. So, basically he uses texture sizes ranging from 1024x512 (both x,y low) up to 4096x2048 (both x, y very high).

Although these seem like very high resolutions, it must be remembered that the framebuffer makes up only a portion of the VRAM. I'm no expert on playstation programming, but according to http://www.buginthemachine.com/ePSXTut03.php the framebuffer is typically 320x240 (NTSC) or 320x256 (PAL). At the high x,y setting, with both of these scaled by a factor of 2, we just get 640x480 (NTSC). The very high x,y (scaled by 4) setting would give 1280x960. Ufortunately, Ati cards can only do high x and very high y, so we are typically left with a 640x960 resolution.

Visually, there is quite a a large difference between 1280x960 and 640x960, and this problem is made worse by the fact that AA is not supported for this type of rendering.
 
m$-MaNiAC said:
Used the DirectX texture tool to view the .DDS textures in the PK3 files.

and Humus is correct the largest textures are 1024x1024...

But i'm certain, that i have read the the S3 Savage based graphics adapters were able to use 8192x8192 textures when S3TC was enabled...

Maybe the Unreal (not UT) S3TC levels used 8192X8192 textures.
Click to expand...
No it did not. The older S3 parts (I don't know about DeltaChrome) supposed 2kx2k textures max.
The geforce graphics adapters support 4096x4096 textures, Quake3 does look better on these systems (Tried it on a Quadro2 system)
Click to expand...
Quake 3 doesn't use any 4kx4k textures, so I don't see how it matters.
 
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