2009-09-21 snapshot

[totorox]

I did some tests with 9.7 drivers, With FBO enabled, Mipmap can't be disabled (no differences).
Without FBO, mipmap setting can be activated and I see a difference, also in memory usage :
Rabbit hill without FBO, no mipmap : near 110 Mo
Rabbit hill without FBO, mipmap on : near 90 Mo
Rabbit hill with FBO on, mipmap on or off : 245 Mo (on big tracks, this cause low FPS during big memory loads)

CPU seem to be allways near 20%, only more when loading with FBO enabled. But seem never highter than 50%. But all work well now, no more errors, seem very stable.

[jlv]

Thanks for checking all that. I wouldn't have expected mipmaps to reduce the memory usage. A mipmapped texture should be 33% larger than a texture without a mipmap. The reason for FBOs using more more memory might be because the non-FBO code caps the texture resolution to 128x128. So if you're running a higher setting it will only take effect if you have FBOs enabled.

[totorox]

A mipmapped texture should be 33% larger than a texture without a mipmap. The reason for FBOs using more more memory might be because the non-FBO code caps the texture resolution to 128x128. So if you're running a higher setting it will only take effect if you have FBOs enabled.

Are you sure of that, because all seem inverted with me. All MXS settings are to max , FBO enabled look blurry, as like with mipmap enabled (I setted anisotrop filtering to auto - by application setting).
Finest picture is obtained with no mipmap & 1024x1024 textures (2 gb memory card).
Mipmap look finer if I set manually in ati panel anisotropic filtering to max (x16) only, but I will show you some screenshots...

[jlv]

Mipmaps will be slightly less sharp. They reduce point sampling artefacts (shimmering/sparkling textures) by using downsampled textures when the texels are smaller than the pixels on the screen.

I wouldn't go for 1024x1024 ground textures as they will use a huge amount of memory. Even 512x512 is overkill.

[totorox]

I have 2gb memory card (not really mine, but i use it for now so it can handle it.

There's absolutly no differences between mipmapped or not with FBO enabled. it's is normal ?
With defaut ATI settings (high quality) : Only no mimap without FBO is different (i prefer), other are same & blurry. (i can understand why process is lighter with mipmap on lol, maybe some ATI driver optimisation)

With forced anisotropic filtering = 16 (a lot better) but i can't see quality differences in any case, only looking for process memory size (bigger = lower FPS) :

[jlv]

With FBO enabled mipmaps are always used. The only reason they're optional for the non-FBO path is because there's an intel driver that corrupts the textures when you enable them.