Guide to mipmapping and optimising textures

[toby23 138]

This knowledge has always been in the SDK. 

[Chocorua 112]

Just to emphasise why it is so important to optimise your textures.

 

Last night, I optimised a set of textures on a recently released payware aircraft that totalled over 700 mb in size.

Optimised, they take up 130 mb and look just as good, if not better.

 

That means 570 mb more VAS, the difference perhaps between an OOM crash or not for many of you.

Is it possible to share which recently released aircraft you are speaking of? And can these reworked textures be shared with others?  

 

I've been following your guide working on CLS DC-10HD and had some success in reducing VAS. I'm still a bit uncertain if I've done things right or if I've taken it far enough though. I was able to fly from DFW to SFO and make it in before it OOM'd, which is a huge improvement.

 

Thank you for posting this...great job.

 

Greg 

[toby23 138]

Sorry, no. I've taken care not to name name's as it is the developer's choice if they wish to provide optimised textures.

And no, all textures are copyright their owner and cannot be shared.

 

If you completed a flight without an OOM with optimised textures, then you did it right.

[Chocorua 112]

OK, thought so but figured I'd ask anyway.       

[johnbrander 0]

 Is there any reason for the suppliers not doing this and supplying optimised textures? 

So this question remains a mystery?

[Fi5kuS 57]

So this question remains a mystery?

 

Because a product is better off with the description "HD textures".

[John_Tavendale 453]

I've been adding mipmaps for my P3D paints to stop the AA issues. I got some feedback saying if you set resolution to 1024 the paints are blurry. Sure enough, I tested this and they were.

The texture size is 2048x2048. Doesn't matter if I add mipmaps via imagetool, or the texture optimizer.

 

Any ideas? Doing textures at 1024x1024 is not an option. It's not a huge deal for me, but for the others who download my paints it can be an issue.

[toby23 138]

External textures at 1024 look fine, if made correctly.
Of course with a 2048 document size, you will have more space to add more detail.

 

VC Cockpit textures are another thing entirely and it depends on how your model is textured and how many texture sheets you use but 1024 and 2048 can both look great.

[Dano 0]

Great guide! Slightly older thread and the images don't show up for me. Is there a PDF version somewhere? Thanks.

[John_Tavendale 453]

Is there any way to eliminate the textures looking blurry if you zoom out? I added mipmaps to a paint, but once you zoom out a bit they appear blurry.

[nthabti79 17]

Is there any way to eliminate the textures looking blurry if you zoom out? I added mipmaps to a paint, but once you zoom out a bit they appear blurry.

 

What I do is to apply the filter sharpen soft to the MIP maps. They look much sharper that way when seen from a distance.

[John_Tavendale 453]

What I do is to apply the filter sharpen soft to the MIP maps. They look much sharper that way when seen from a distance.

Great, thanks! Works great!

[NZ255 309]

I'm curious, have you tried this with heavy addons such as PMDG T7, NGX etc or mega-airports? It should drastically reduce VAS consumption but I don't know the scope and amount of textures that need to be mipmapped in order to achieve such.

You'll find all developers already implement mipmaps and save as dds. There may be some textures that might not have mips or saved as bmp but they'll be for good reason