Comments on: Image Size on Disk and VRAM https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/ Developer resources for the X-Plane flight simulator Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:14:57 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 By: alloycowboy https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2309 Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:14:57 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2309 Hey check out this 787 sim with all touch screens.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/learmount/2011/05/the_dreamliner_becomes_real.html

]]> By: Ben Supnik https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2306 Tue, 31 May 2011 19:25:31 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2306 In reply to Tom Curtis.

First: the sim will load the texture only once, and the behavior is undefined…either the load center will be ignored or the texture will be de-rezed. Using load-center texes in anything but a single pol or ter is not recommended in v9.

Second: nope – load-cener is not avialable for OBJs yet. We are looking at this for v10 though, as you are correct: the cost of VRAM for a custom airport could be reduced.

]]> By: Tom Curtis https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2305 Tue, 31 May 2011 19:01:58 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2305 I have two questions along this line. If I have a texture (ortho-photo) and give it a Load_Center in the .pol file, and also want to use it to texture map part of an object, does X-Plane only load the texture once? or does it load it once for the .pol and once for the object?

Also, ( I think I know the answer) is it possible to use the attr Load_Center in a object at this time? I realize that the object’s LOD will mitigate this in most cases, but some objects like airport terminals have a fairly long LOD distance. Is there any benefit to using it? If so, will XP 10 support this?

]]> By: Ben Supnik https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2300 Mon, 30 May 2011 00:48:10 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2300 In reply to donbach.

Final decision hasn’t been made – you’ll have to wait for v10 to ship I think.

]]> By: Ben Supnik https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2299 Mon, 30 May 2011 00:46:42 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2299 In reply to Nelson.

Possibly – except..
– having the file uncompressed is easier for authoring/accessibility.
– disk read time and seek time aren’t the same … in the cases where I have seen x-plane be disk bound, it’s on seek time; making files smaller (and compressed) doesn’t help that much.

]]> By: Nelson https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2298 Mon, 30 May 2011 00:11:06 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2298 It’s not very related with the post, but to read apt.dat on my slow notebook HDD it needs 2.959s (average of 5 runs, always dropping caches on Linux) while the same file can be read with 1.851s if compressed with lzop (also the average of 5 runs; time is already the total of uncompressing + reading the content).

Since today’s processors are faster than our disks, is it worth (and do you have any plans for this) to distribute optimized PNG files (by using pngcrush/optipng) and other files (like apt.dat and other possible big text files) using a fast decompression algorithm?
Less things to read = faster loading time (and less space on disk)

]]> By: donbach https:/2011/05/image-size-on-disk-and-vram/#comment-2297 Sun, 29 May 2011 23:29:09 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/blog/?p=3509#comment-2297 Ben, you left us repaint authors rather hanging from your blog posted from 9/21/10, Revisiting Texture Compression. Are your musings still that? Or will xp10 rendering settings allow uncompressed png texture files to load for liveries?
thanx for these further DDS vs PNG format comparisons.

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