3 questions about texture sizes

Question

Hi there all,
I have 3 questions about texture sizes. First off, after
doing a search in this forum, I found out how to find the maxium
texture size my hardware can handle. However, this is only
currently tells me what the texture size I should use for my
computer. So basically, what my first question is, I wanted to know
what would be the average texture size for PC's. Why I ask this is
because arfter doing the command that finds my maxium texture size
that my computer can handle, it says that I can handle up to
2048x2048, but this doesn't help if lets say the standard hardware
texture size is 1024x1024.
My second question is, when you speak in maxium hardware
texture size terms, is this for per object, per scene that is
loaded into memory, or for the entire game?
... and my last question is, does hardware texture size also
include basic shaders as well (meaning with no textures)? If not is
there a limit on that as well?

Answer 1

1. If you know what maximum texturesize the endusers
graficcard can handle, you can build a switch to different *.w3d
files with that are saved with different texturesizes. you can see
how the hardware variates:
http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/pipermail/dir3d-l/2005-September/009554.html
but don't forget that the macs are limited at the moment to a
maximum texturesize of 512x512. If the textures are bigger then the
maximum texturesize they are scaled down to it. In your example a
texture that is 2048x2048 would be scaled down to 1048x1048 if this
is the maximum texturesize of the endusers machine.
2. The maximum texturesize is per Texture. But the Textures
are stored uncompressed in the VRAM of the graficcard. There is no
way to check how much RAM is left and i am not sure what happens if
you put a lot of data in it.
3. A shader only layers textures like photoshop and renderes
them depending on the settings of the shader. The maximum hardware
texture size only limits the size of the texture, if you use no
textures in the shader (setting all texturelayers to void) the
model will be only rendered depending on the values that are given
by "ambient", "emissive", "diffuse", "specular"
Just want to add here that textures should be in this sizes:
1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256,
512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096 ...
but can be also be combined like this:
32x1024 or 512x256 and so on. this is just good to know.
If textures do not fit into this grid of pixel values, the
texture will be scaled up or down to the next size that is closest
to it.
if you type this code into the message window and execute
every line, you can check the resulting texturesize.
global pImage
pImage=image(100, 1000, 24)
member("world").newtexture("image", #fromimageobject, pImage)
put member("world").texture("image").width
-- 128
put member("world").texture("image").height
-- 1024
This will happen to all textures if they enter the
graficcard.