Quote from axus :

Yes, that is exactly the reason as I explained above. Some people just didn't read the follow-up in the edit. So we could up texture size and increase frame rate. But as someone said, it would go to waste if the final S2 release contains higher resolution textures anyway. The support for MIP maps seems to already be there so that is one big hint that the final textures will contain higher resolution MIP mapped textures, but we cannot be sure without confirmation from one of the devs. I would really like to know if this is in the works for S2 final and weather we will be wasting our time working on such a project.

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has anybody got a script that creates mip maps on all of lfs´ dds files or something like that ? it might really help people with older hardware

Quote from Shotglass :

has anybody got a script that creates mip maps on all of lfs´ dds files or something like that ? it might really help people with older hardware

I was looking for something of the sort earlier and found nothing ... If someone already has, please share it.

It sounds very odd that you would get a performance increase from having the mipmaps "pregenerated" in the DDS files. There are mipmaps in use already in LFS (You can clearly see this, especially with AF off), the mipmaps are just generated when the texture is loaded instead of keeping them in the DDS files.

Quote from Kegetys :

It sounds very odd that you would get a performance increase from having the mipmaps "pregenerated" in the DDS files. There are mipmaps in use already in LFS (You can clearly see this, especially with AF off), the mipmaps are just generated when the texture is loaded instead of keeping them in the DDS files.

I assumed this for a time too, but photoshop took about 10x longer to generate MIP maps for a single texture than LFS to load all the textures... I'm not sure why this is. If one of the devs could explain this in detail it would be nice...

Quote from axus :

I assumed this for a time too

You assumed it correctly, since the mipmaps are there.

Quote from Kegetys :

You assumed it correctly, since the mipmaps are there.

Then how do you explain the FPS increase, despite the texture size increase?

yes there are mipmaps ... but as long as youre not using triliniear filtering and youve got enough texture (fast) memory you should see a sizeable performance increase as the graphics card wont have to dynamically generate mip maps anymore (at least as long as pulling them from memory is faster than generating them on the spot)

Quote from axus :

I assumed this for a time too, but photoshop took about 10x longer to generate MIP maps for a single texture than LFS to load all the textures... I'm not sure why this is. If one of the devs could explain this in detail it would be nice...

When making wad files for halflife, the mipmap generating was also taking like ages, but because it used palettes for the colors.
I dont know how LFS makes it, but isn't generating mipmaps also possible with the GPU? Ithink it's possible in OpenGL, so why not in DX/D3D, too?

Quote from Shotglass :

yes there are mipmaps ... but as long as youre not using triliniear filtering and youve got enough texture (fast) memory you should see a sizeable performance increase as the graphics card wont have to dynamically generate mip maps anymore (at least as long as pulling them from memory is faster than generating them on the spot)

Generating MIP maps on the spot (I assume you mean real-time - as you drive along) is crazy IMO - that would be very GPU intensive and I think most would rather give up 200MB HDD space and have better quality textures than suffer the performace loss. If you mean genrating them while loading textures, that would make perfect sense to me but the performance increase is not sensible then.

Quote from axus :

Then how do you explain the FPS increase, despite the texture size increase?

Placebo effect? Driver bug?

I just converted all the LFS DDS's to TGA and then back to DDS again with mipmap generation enabled (using the nvidia tools) and saw no FPS difference.

Maybe it is something with my hardware (Athlon 1800+, GeForce FX 5200 - 128MB RAM, 512MB RAM). I have not used a benchmarking programme to check this, but before my fps rate on BL1 would never go above 90fps and now it goes over 100 in some places. I assume you didn't change the texture resolution, but increasing it as I did and achieving an fps increase is even more ludicrous.

Anyway, back to the topic. Seing as we can get away with running higher resolution frame rates, who would take part in making better, higher resolution textures?

The dds files were saved without mipmaps to save download size. The mipmaps are automatically generated when the files are loaded. So that wouldn't make any difference.

As for texture resizing, i wouldn't recommend making them all bigger, as Eric has tried to aim for a good compromise - also because LFS is designed to run well on slightly older hardware. I'm sure you can benefit from higher res ones in some cases, but better just to upgrade those that you need to, instead of all of them - which would use a lot more texture memory!

Quote from Scawen :

The dds files were saved without mipmaps to save download size. The mipmaps are automatically generated when the files are loaded. So that wouldn't make any difference.

As for texture resizing, i wouldn't recommend making them all bigger, as Eric has tried to aim for a good compromise - also because LFS is designed to run well on slightly older hardware. I'm sure you can benefit from higher res ones in some cases, but better just to upgrade those that you need to, instead of all of them - which would use a lot more texture memory!

Thank you for clearing everything up... it could have been a background application or something of the sort then. The texture pack I was thinking of would obviously be something optional and directed at peopel with better hardware who can really benefit from higher resolution textures - but I some nK Pro Screenshots came out recently with very good texture detail and I wouldn't want LFS to loose ground to that when it comes out...

Quote from axus :

...but I some nK Pro Screenshots came out recently with very good texture detail and I wouldn't want LFS to loose ground to that when it comes out...

I think i saw that image too. It's possible that it may be impractical or impossible to cover a whole track with extremely high resolution textures, unless there's a lot of repetition. I didn't spend long looking at the picture, and don't follow nK's progress, so i'm in no position to judge if that's a realistic representation of textures all round the track.

I think we should stay realistic. Got a 512MB graphicscard of the newest generation? Sure?

As I understand it, those screenies come from an extra high resolution texture used in replay mode, so prehaps it isn't that much of a worry but the grass especially IMO could be more photoreal...

@SladiVadi - No, but currently LFS uses ~20-30MB of graphics memory. if I had a 512 graphics car I could use 16x the current texture sizes (implying 4xwidth and 4xheight). For now I'll be very pleased with more detailed ones that are 2x the width and 2x the height, while keeping memory usage reasonable for a 128MB (probably the most common in the gaming community) graphics card.

So if we are making a hi-res pack for LFS, what kind of cards do we expect people to have? Memory size is probably the most important factor so 512,256 or 128mb cards? I guess 512 is overshooting, 256 still too much for most and 128 doesn't really sound much enough.

Suggestions?

EDIT: so 128 should do?

Yeah but it's not size that matters it's bandwidth.

Quote from SladiVadi :

Yeah but it's not size that matters it's bandwidth.

Which is why I did a test - I applied Bicubic Scaling to all BL1 textures and doubled their width and height. I still get 100fps on the track on my 5200 FX and that is rated to be a rubbish GFX card. I think we can easily get away with it.

EDIT: @Hyperactive: Unless we work on 4096x4096 and then release multiple versions for different users with different GFX cards that is the best option IMO.

Quote from axus :

EDIT: @Hyperactive: Unless we work on 4096x4096 and then release multiple versions for different users with different GFX cards that is the best option IMO.

Of course :doh:

(Nice smiley: :bath

Perhaps we should wait for nK Pro to come out and copy-paste their textures? (with appropriate editing obviously) :evil:

Quote from axus :

Perhaps we should wait for nK Pro to come out and copy-paste their textures? (with appropriate editing obviously) :evil:

Ok. You buy the game, I'll then convert the files

Just get a high MP digicam, and take a photo of the road