[sldev] Reformatting Textures for the cache

[Morse Dillon]

John Hurliman wrote:
> I've been saying for a while that SL should do away with 1024 textures 
> as well and make 512x512 the upper limit unless they plan on upping 
> the minimum system requirements. Just a couple 1024x1024 textures will 
> have a 64MB graphics card switching to AGP texturing (using system 
> memory to store textures), clog the AGP bus and drop you from 7fps to 
> less than 1. If you want to provide high quality photo portraits to 
> people, give them a web link. If you want to texture 3D objects in a 
> real-time online world, keep your minimum system specs in mind. I 
> haven't looked at that part of the rendering pipeline yet but in the 
> best case scenario SL is taking your video memory size in to account 
> and possibly downscaling the images.

I disagree with this on a very fundamental level.  Artificial limits 
like this are what dates software, and it would be a mistake to do so 
with an application like SL that has a bright future ahead of it.  
512x512 is not sufficient for quality texture work, and furthermore the 
number of people running 64MB graphics is fewer and fewer each day.  I 
would rather see SL moving toward taking full advantage of 512MB+ video 
memory rather than handcuffing it to the past.  If it takes an increase 
in the minimum specs, so be it.

-M