Elvas Tower: No power of two limitation - Elvas Tower

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No power of two limitation Texture mapping just got more interesting Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   ErickC 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 02:20 AM

My current project has a bit of a problem: the optimal texture size for what I want to do isn't a power of two - it's 2560 x 2560. I had a gut feeling that the manual never explicitly said that texture sizes must be a power of two (and, truthfully, it's probably more habit than anything in my case, since it's a standard limitation with most of the games I've worked with), so I decided to scale up one of my existing models' textures to 2560 x 2560 - sure enough, OR loads it just fine.

It seems like this will be the way to go for this model, but can anyone think of any reasons that textures of this resolution may not load for other users? Are there any video cards with funky limitations, or should anything capable of handling hi-res textures (i.e. anything made in the last ten years) be able to deal with it (i.e. was this power of 2 stuff purely a game engine limitation on whatever platforms I had been developing for before)? Should I make a demo model and gather data from the larger community, or should I assume it will work for everyone running OR? I know that many MSTS users are still using ancient machines, but I don't intend to imply or provide any back-compatibility. I've had enough of adding noise to textures to avoid blotchiness, inefficient materials, and running models through third-party programs just to get them to work.

#2 User is offline   ebnertra000 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 06:26 AM

I would do a test model just to be sure. I like the idea of non-power-of-two sized textures, but it would pay to make sure it will work for all OR users before getting too carried away

#3 User is offline   thegrindre 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 07:05 AM

I will test it for you. I have an 11 or 12 years old Win XP machine with a GForce 8800 GTS vid card with 640mb on board.

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#4 User is offline   James Ross 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 10:08 AM

View PostErickC, on 18 October 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

It seems like this will be the way to go for this model, but can anyone think of any reasons that textures of this resolution may not load for other users?

It is possible some older graphics cards will not load it, but I suspect at this point we're talking really old.

Also, according to the Direct3D feature levels (footnote 3), you will probably not be able to provide mipmaps (this may affect the texture's appearance when far away or at a big angle to the screen), nor use the wrapping UV mode. If these are not currently a problem for you, you're good.

#5 User is offline   BillC 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 10:24 AM

View Postthegrindre, on 18 October 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

I will test it for you. I have an 11 or 12 years old Win XP machine with a GForce 8800 GTS vid card with 640mb on board.

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This thread emphasizes the point of OR doing a freeze for XP, and moving on. Most developers of new features will not have the resources of testing for XP related capability.

#6 User is offline   ErickC 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 04:37 PM

View PostJames Ross, on 18 October 2017 - 10:08 AM, said:

Also, according to the Direct3D feature levels (footnote 3), you will probably not be able to provide mipmaps (this may affect the texture's appearance when far away or at a big angle to the screen), nor use the wrapping UV mode. If these are not currently a problem for you, you're good.

Seems these are only DX9-level issues. I actually set my mip LOD bias to -5, because MSTS never did a good job of handling them, so they always just made the entire model look like garbage at anything but the most severe viewing angles. I also never "tile" textures.

View Postthegrindre, on 18 October 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

I will test it for you. I have an 11 or 12 years old Win XP machine with a GForce 8800 GTS vid card with 640mb on board.

This sounds like a job for the material test cube. I'll come up with something soon-ish.

#7 User is offline   thegrindre 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 08:44 PM

View PostBillC, on 18 October 2017 - 10:24 AM, said:

This thread emphasizes the point of OR doing a freeze for XP, and moving on. Most developers of new features will not have the resources of testing for XP related capability.


I didn't read that into this thread.
XP is still going strong with many of us still.

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View PostErickC, on 18 October 2017 - 04:37 PM, said:

This sounds like a job for the material test cube. I'll come up with something soon-ish.


Either thru PM or e-mail. Doesn't matter to me. I will gladly help.

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#8 User is offline   James Ross 

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 11:42 PM

View PostErickC, on 18 October 2017 - 04:37 PM, said:

Seems these are only DX9-level issues.

Yes, which means they apply to OR.

#9 User is offline   ErickC 

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Posted 19 October 2017 - 10:34 AM

Okay, here is a my material test cube, in OR-usable form (more or less) and with 2560 x 2560 pixel textures. It's just a box with a diffuse map applied, but it will demonstrate whether or not the user will be able to load non-power-of-two textures. It is powerful for its size, with an EMD 16-567C diesel engine, but the view from the cab is somewhat nonexistent. You can't really expect much more out of a painted box, though. Pretend you're a cat and enjoy yourself!

Attached File  MTC-OR.zip (1.26MB)
Number of downloads: 585

I would encourage many users to try it out, to see if this will be a problem or not with a wider release. I suspect that any DX9-or-greater-compatible card will be problem-free.

#10 User is offline   espee 

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Posted 19 October 2017 - 11:09 AM

I got a fail with a Win10 laptop, NVIDIA GeForce 920MX (2.0 GB RAM), OR Version X3941 ...

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