Query about “textures”

[Mr_sukebe]

I’m hoping that someone can enlighten me on the subject of textures.

The first option in graphics setting is titled “textures” and the options are high, medium and low.

From playing around recently, I’ve found there to be a huge difference in performance for my setup when switching between high and medium.

My assumption is that “high” is loading larger texture files, which are completely filling the VRAM in my GPU and resulting in loading from RAM or my SSD.

Running with medium and I’ve got enough headroom to set MSAA to x4, whilst in VR.

My question is what the scope of textures includes.  I see separate settings for terrain.  Do the textures cover the:

- player aurcraft

- AI aircraft

- ships

- ground vehicles

- buildings

 

Apologies if this sounds like a dumb question, but it’s not obvious.

 

 

 

 

[twistking]

28 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Do the textures cover the:

- player aurcraft

- AI aircraft

- ships

- ground vehicles

- buildings

Player AC, AI AC, ships, vehicles and generally all editor placeable objects definitely fall under "textures". I am not sure about bulldings, but would guess that they do too.
"Terrain textures" obviously covers the ground textures. As mentioned above i'm not sure about buildings (and other preplaced map objects) but woudl guess that they do not fall under "terrain textures". Should be easy to test though...

If you test texture settings, always restart DCS to make sure the different texture quality gets actually applied and ram/vram gets flushed before making any judgement about performance...

Edited December 17, 2022 by twistking

[Moxica]

How about water?
Because there is a layer of ocean under all land textures.
I guess they potentially take some room i VRAM?
Especially if they also renders as high texture quality.

[twistking]

32 minutes ago, Moxica said:

How about water?
Because there is a layer of ocean under all land textures.
I guess they potentially take some room i VRAM?
Especially if they also renders as high texture quality.

water has it's own setting and for this discussion i think one could claim that "water is not texture".  With this i mean that the effect is mostly shader based and therefore has a totally different performance foodprint compared to what we normally refer to as textures (albedo maps and material maps...). Maybe it's technically correct to refer to the water as texture, but i think in general it's a good idea to think of it as somewhat seperate...

ps: without testing, i'd guess that water has more of a processing foodprint and less of a vram-size/bandwith foodprint.

Edited December 17, 2022 by twistking