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Author
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Topic: Hi res Skins and Texture Ram.
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Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 07:33 AM
   
Spanky here..
K guys. I don't know about you guys but i find the skins pretty pixely and washed out. I know we can't do much unless we all get 32meg cards. At this point. But when SOS comes out (i'm praying its still going to happen) Will we be able to fix this? Why is it that the texures for the planes have to be stored in texture ram? Can't we store it in regular ram or on the hard drive and spool it off that? We have a texture cache right now that i guess it just for the ground textures? Anywas there has to be another way to do it cause some of the newer sims coming out have higher res skins and they don't say you need a 32meg Geforce. That would be insane. Maybe some sort of texture compression built into the game? IP: Logged |
DanW
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 12:25 PM
The skins are pixelly because you only have 1 or 2 256x256 square files for the whole aircraft. It is washed out if you use Glide, cause, well, Glide washes images out.The textures are stored in the Ram on the card because its the fastest place the card can get them. If it was faster by placing it in the system ram, then you wouldn't need as much RAM as we have on video cards today. In fact, storing the texture memory in the system RAM is very slow. You have the bus speed limitations and all that hoopla. So, texture memory is best suited on the actual card itself. The texture caches is what the 40 or so .tif files in the par files decompress too in order for you to play the game. They are stored in compressed format. Newer games are gonna require even higher amounts of texture RAM...thats why we are already seeing 64 meg GeForces and 128 meg Voodoo products on the horizon. Someone correct me if im wrong, but the whole idea of 3d acceleration is to get rid of the slow pipeline between the cpu and the video card. Going the opposite way would not make any sense. IP: Logged |
Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 01:05 PM
Spanky here.. Ok man that all makes sense. But tell me then how do all the other games have all kinds of textures? How is B17 2 going to have those kick ass skins and still not MAKE us all by geforce's? How do they do it? There has to be a work around man. Just doubling the texture would do wonders for the planes right? a 512x512 texture would do pretty good. And if i'm thinking right it would be like having 4 256x256 textures. and so take up 4 times as much texture ram space. I know its slower but we could have it pull off the HD or RAM when you get close to the planes and if a plane is in the mission but 10 miles away you don't need that skin loaded in ram. We need a work around cause i don't think we can convince everyone to just go buy a 32 or 64 meg vid card. Heck there is still people around here using 8 meg and 12 meg cards. how do they do it?
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Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 01:07 PM
Spanky here.. K just to clear some stuff up what is in the big cache file? is it everything? all the the things checked off on the check list before a mission?
And what is loaded into texture ram and when?
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Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 01:24 PM
K I was just playing around. I took a Spit skin someone made and droped the color count. to 32k colors. It looks virtually the same and it dropped from 126k to 66.8k. That to me seems pretty damn cool unless something wacky happens later in the process to make that all not worth it. It seems to be that we could start using more 2xs as many 256x256 skins for each plane then we do now if we did this. IP: Logged |
Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 01:31 PM
Spanky here..
Huh seems like some planes already use this method and some don't the main skin for the F4u is 50k
the main skin for the b17 is around 40k
but the main skin for 2 of the bf109s are 200k and they use 2 skins each. Maybe we need to go through all the planes and fix this. I can't see any reason why some planes would have 200k skins and others 50k skins. IP: Logged |
Nat
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 03:42 PM
The texture maps for a/c don't have to be 256x256 at all. I have often created larger skins to get better definition of details, the thing is, 1 - you use more texture ram by using larger textures, 2 - the large texture you create gets shrunk to fit the model. I still find though that using 512x512 gives better definition of filters and effects that I use, even after the game shrinks them to fit. You'll see more what I'm saying if you take a skin, increase it's size by 200%, repaint it then save it at that size. The skin still fits the model even after to make the skin bigger.oh, and the game does use texture compression, just not everyon that makes the skins uses it (myself included) the game uses Tif with Zip compression, thats why unless you have a prog that can view this type (ifranview) you only see a black picture, or get an error
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JV~44 "Naturlich"
 If you can't beat em.... out run em!
http://members.xoom.com/naturlich/
[This message has been edited by Nat (edited 03-12-2000).] IP: Logged |
JT
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 04:11 PM
Dan and I have experimented with this stuff a great deal. Recently, however, we've found that using 2 256x256 tifs per plane works out really well in terms of visual quality and efficiency of memory usage. The reason it works so well is that you can tightly fit all the texture pieces like puzzle pieces onto the tifs... leaving very little wasted space. This also means that you're maximizing the amount of pixels per shape. The only drawback is that it's more challenging to do the texture mapping.[This message has been edited by JT (edited 03-12-2000).] IP: Logged |
Michael Harrison
General
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posted 03-12- 04:18 PM
Note that although we do support compressed textures (in tiff files) we don't actually support "texture compression".Texture compression usually refers to compression as it's supported on the graphics card. We will likely support it in the future (or perhaps go OpenGL and let the drivers do it). For now, most of our textures end up in the card as 16bit. IP: Logged |
Bryan Russell
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 06:06 PM
Nat : You would be much better making the skin large and then resizing it in your paint package, which probably does as good or probably better job than SDOE's resizing and filtering alogrithms, plus you don't have the larger file on disk.Spanky: The screen with the tick marks on it is optimising the textures for the game with relation to the video mode used (and putting them in the texture cache). it doesn't really matter what the format of the TIF is on disk, it will be converted to mostly 16bit format and 32bit format for other cards that support that. So you don't really save anything in terms of video card memory. it is a benefit for disk space though. I believe B17II supports up to 1024x1024 textures and is targeted at 32Meg /Fast AGP Video cards. it might still work on older cards but you will see alot of texture swapouts, and for cards that don't support 1024x1024 I suspect that the textures will be preprocessed to the size supported by the card. Personnally I find that I can get a fairly decent looking skin for a single engined fighter using just one 256x256 texture. That includes unique mapping for all of the surfaces of the plane. It starts out as layered 1600x1600 PSP and is reduced by PSP to save it as a Tiff. The only thing failing me now is the lack of any hint of artisitic ability.  One thing to remeber is what you are hoping to acheive with your texture. If you want a plane for show then people will be taking a close look at it, so you need high definition textures on it. For general game play I think that given the average distance the aircraft will be viewed from you can get away with a lessor resolution. This is mainly what I am basing getting a decent looking skin out of 256x256.
Bryan
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Nat
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 06:28 PM
for arguments sake, I think that the Corsair skin (number 182) that I did looked pretty wicked, got some good effects on it and if I spent more time I'm sure I could get it better, that skin is a double i.e one tif for the body, 1 for the wings, both textures are at 256*256, so I think you can get alot of detail by using 2 tifs instead of 1, but even so, with a lil more effort I'm fairly sure you can get a similar effect with a simgle skin.IP: Logged |
Tailslide
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 06:30 PM
I find 256x256 is a good tradeoff too.. I'd prefer to put the extra textures inside the cockpit where you're going to see them all the time up close rather than on the outside where you only see it from a distance. TS
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DanW
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 06:41 PM
DAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh....!!!Man I want to post some screenies of my Jug. Just one more week. Personally, I like the Flanker 2 512x512 bitmap. Works great. But, as JT said, 2 fully used tif files seems to be the sweet spot for this sim. IP: Logged |
dauntless851
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 09:09 PM
Touching on the Corsair textures. The fuselage tif has some quirky sections.From what I've seen of it, the fuselage has 2 lods. The main fuselage section, and a smaller rear section.
I guess when it was mapped, the rear section is just a tiny bit off line from the main fuselage. You can find that out by trying to do a blue tri-color scheme,where the demarcation line is up near the star/bar insignia. The texture looks lined up after you've painted it, but when you see it in the game it's not lined up.
There is also a section below the side of the cockpit that makes the texture dark in that area.
I like to do authentic paint/markings. While putting on a double digit number on the rudder(2 lods), I noticed (in the sim) that one number was the size I had put on, and the other number was considerably larger. One number was on each lod of the rudder assembly.
It is going to be difficult to do authentic markings for the Corsair as it is now. I am extremely new to AC3D, and I did manage to texture map the entire fuselage and tail at the same time by putting the lods together. Unfortunately, when I went to OPS with it, the fuselage was considerably lower than the wings and I couldn't move it up to them. I put the plane together where it was just to see if the texture map I did worked, and it did.
Does anyone know what could cause these strange occurances to the textures? IP: Logged |
DanW
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 09:56 PM
I would say the texture mapping is off. If you dont map all the pieces at the right proportions, then its gonna be off. Also, when you texture map, if its not exactly alinged then its gonna be off in the game.The dark parts are probably caused by welding the vertices at too high a threshold...but I could be wrong. I haven't gotten a chance to look at the corsair yet. But after we are done with the P47 I may look at it. Just whoever has the original files from AC3D, dont chuck them out.....you may find other people that can look at it and help out. IP: Logged |
Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-12- 10:28 PM
Spanky here..
Ok so when it converts to the format it will use. It automatically makes them all pretty much the same size? as in KBs on the vid card? "it might still work on older cards but you will see alot of texture swapouts" ?? But as far as i know we can't even do texture swapouts?
I hear what you guys are saying about having lots of detail inside but to keep up with the new sims this is going to have to be fixed. And thats with out forceing everyone to use geforces and other cards with 32megs or higher.
Whats the plan MH? IP: Logged |
Bryan Russell
Pilot
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posted 03-13- 12:24 AM
quote:
It automatically makes them all pretty much the same size? as in KBs on the vid card?
That's right, for a particular texture size. quote:
But as far as i know we can't even do texture swapouts?
Texture swapouts in terms of the texture being swapped in and out of Video ram. At the moment a "swapped out" texture looks blurry in SDOE. The blurry texture is a prefiltered smaller version of the texture thats used for low resolution display of the texture and probably MipMapping. quote:
I hear what you guys are saying about having lots of detail inside but to keep up with the new sims this is going to have to be fixed. And thats with out forceing everyone to use geforces and other cards with 32megs or higher.
In reality hi resolution texture support is already there, its just a matter of using many 256x256 instead of one 1024x1024. This is what basically happened with the P38Mod. The main issue is texture memory on the video card. Even on something like a GeForce, the 32M is not all texture memory. At the moment with many of us using cards with a limited amount of texture mem, its not practical to produce models with high resolution texture maps. What would really help is some sort of feature that allowed some people to have high resolution textures, and others with low res and not have it effect compatibility in network play. In any case I can't imagine that it's an extreamly difficult task to increase the supported texture size in SDOE anyway, but in reality the only benifit is making it easier to map the textures and paint the templates. IP: Logged |
Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-13- 04:07 AM
Spanky here.. K lets get away from the tech here. Just answer me one question. Lots of other games have higher resolution textures on the models. Some how they do it and i'm not just talking sims or New games. How do they do it. Even if it would mean a bit of a performance hit is it possible to tweak or change the code in SDOE to have a higher texture res? By that i mean make it so you can use 2 or 3 256x256 panels for each plane. Without having the texture ram run out. In esence only load the textures into the vid card when they are needed. IE why have a BF109 skin loaded on the card if its on the other side of the map? IP: Logged |
Hawk
JAG
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posted 03-13- 07:08 AM
Tailslide, there are some of us that like to look at our planes close up. I hope not too many painters think that we only look at planes from a distance.RC Warbirds
http://home.earthlink.net/%7Epgrubich/
[This message has been edited by Hawk (edited 03-13-2000).] IP: Logged |
Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 03-13- 07:23 AM
Spanky here.. Exactly Hawk. Plus the immersion factor goes up when we roll past or almost hit another plane and it looks real. If it didn't matter we could have planes that were more simple. Say 500 polys as opposed to the 700-1000 we have now. That would work just fine.
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JG5Jerry
Pilot
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posted 03-13- 08:49 AM
Altho' I'm not completely up on the techie side of it all, the textures you make will look somewhat blurry because the grpahcis card is smoothing it out. If I was you (and assuming you have a TNT-type card), I'd turn down mip-mapping to 0 and see if that helps a bit. If the game engine is only deisgned to handle 16-bit 256x256 textures, then trying to handle texture files that differ from that on the fly will cause it some problems, AFAIK. I'm not sure 32 meg cards would make a difference unless the actual game engine could tell them to utilise the extra memory. ------------------
C/O Jagdgeschwader 5 'Eismeer' http://www.madasafish.com/jerry/jg5/ IP: Logged |
Bryan Russell
Pilot
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posted 03-13- 05:40 PM
Spanky : The game already only loads textures when they are needed. The bottom line with textures is that unless texture compression is used in the API or Vid card then there is a fixed amount of memory used by each texture for a given size. You can't change that. Even with the compression scenario I think that compression should really be a hardware thing, as a software implementation is just going to slow things down. Hardware means a new video card. I would love to see every plane in SDOE (and other games) with beautiful hi-res textures and models. However as a representative of the 'I've got an old PC ' club, I would rather see good (rather than great) looking aircraft that don't get the blurry texture all the time and half decent frame rates. If and when I ever upgrade my PC however I will then completely switch and demand hi-res everything. 'Bugger all you poor bastards with crappy machines' will be my catch cry. In preparation of my purchase of the 2.5GHz processor with GeForce 1024 , wouldn’t it be great to have the model making and texture creation god’s of SDOE (sorry no names, I’m bound to offend someone other wise ) make one plane with out regard to FPS and texture ram limitations. Even if it didn’t run any faster than a slide show on most of the current machines it would sure start some conversations if screen shots were posted around the traps, and would really showcase how unlimited OpenPlane is in terms of quality of model.
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