Textures vs. Terrain Textures?

[fitness88]

Can someone please explain the difference between Textures and Terrain Textures. It seems like they both do the same thing.

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

Textures

• Low – Low resolution textures for terrain, objects, and cockpit.

• Medium – Medium resolution textures for terrain, objects, and cockpit.

• High – High resolution textures for terrain, objects, and cockpit.

Terrain Textures

The option affects the level of detail for terrain and building textures. If this option is changed

after DCS has already loaded in the terrain (loaded into a mission or the mission editor) a restart

is required for the changes take effect. If a player entered the options menu immediately after

loading the game interface, a restart is not required.

• Low – Terrain surface textures for the chosen map will be loaded in a low resolution.

• High – Terrain surface textures for the chosen map will be loaded in a high resolution.

[martinistripes]

I posted a similar question in the Heatblur sub-forum and got no reply, despite a bump. :huh:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=282443&highlight=Texture+sizes

[RuskyV]

As far as I know just ‘textures" are for cockpit texture resolution only and terrain textures control terrain only.

 

As to what the terrain textures actually change is a bit of a mystery to me, I know from the Syrian map to keep the terrain textures on low for quite a good hike in performance for no noticeable loss in quality.

[fitness88]

I guess I'll do a trial and error.

[dundun92]

AFAIK terrain textures have no visual effect, but putting it on high does increase RAM usage. See this post: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=202092

Now textures, from what Ive noticed, changes the resolution of cockpit textures (it may change the external textures as well but I usually am not paying attention)

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

AFAIK terrain textures have no visual effect

 

Oh yes they do: the difference between LOW and HIGH is quite massive actually. In some maps it won't stand out that much (*cough* Caucasus *cough*) but in newer maps it is very noticeable.

Putting terrain textures on HIGH not only increases detail on the terrain itself, but also on the foliage, trees, terrain shadows, and detail of the shadows of your own aircraft on the ground.

Even in the low resolution of my CV1 the difference is so high I simply refuse to put them on LOW (I fly helicopters a lot which makes it even more important).

[Boosterdog]

Oh yes they do:

 

Agreed. Another DCS settings "myth" based on the experience of one person using one map.

[Worrazen]

Yeah, my wish is that, I'm not pushing it any sooner but at least with when the upgrade to Vulkan API comes, the whole graphics options sceen to be overhauled, rewired, renamed and redesigned so that it's more self explanatory to what it does but also explains what kind of variables are being adjusted behind the setting, tooltips are gread for long descriptions, or the use of a description area box below where the description text is shown based on what option your mouse pointer is hovering on.

 

I would like to see more finesse and control in adjusting things independently, not that this is the biggest problem or anything, but it would demistify a lot and I think it would reduce amount of discussions we would have about it and sort of get it out of the way, people would experiment with it on their own without having to spend time digging into, sort of hope it would work that way.

 

Some things are in-game issues, for example LOD Transitions between trees (in Caucasus at leas) are too rough and it's implemented in such a way that the LOD scale is tied with the draw distance scale and it doesn't work good in lower draw distances because the LOD scale becomes so thin you basically see a lot of blurred out trees. Some kind of fix did happen at the time but I think it didn't completely solve it if I remember correctly, I haven't tested this in +6 months so perhaps something more changed since. The other thing was, which I ran out of time and didn't finish reporting in that very thread, is actually a separate issue, but still about the trees, the LOD transitions between trees are inoptimal, the tree silhouettes are changing completely, LOD1 is a tree with 1 tree-trunk while LOD2 is has 2 or 3 tree trunks, back and forth basically tree's are being changed and it's not the same tree going through it's own LOD levels, this is what causes the very noticable tree flickering, finally found the culprit behind it, I did last year but it takes time to make a video and proper report.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Worrazen