[sldev] Reformatting Textures for the cache

[John Hurliman]

Morse Dillon wrote:
> 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

I agree with you wholeheartedly. If I had it my way, Second Life 
wouldn't even run on an AGP card and would require a latest top end 
system just to get to the login screen. These people running less than 
2Ghz dual-core processors and GPUs with only 128MB and less than pixel 
shader 3.0 support are cramping my artistic style. But unless we are 
talking about a fork, LL has been very clear that they aren't budging on 
the minimum requirements and we have to work with the limitations of the 
system. You don't try and do DVD decoding on a 40MHz embedded processor, 
and you don't try and use ultra-high quality textures in a real-time 3D 
environment running on 64MB of memory.

John Hurliman