FSXA Choice of texture size

[bstikkel]

Hello all,

I want to create a lot of 3D grass like flower and small plants objects.

What is better for the performance in FSX:

For every object one small texture or one high res texture that contains the textures of many objects ?

Thanks for the advice.
Bram Stikkel

 

[JRobinson]

Absolutely texture as many veg objects as possible with a single sheet, in fact merge an existing object into your scene just to import the material so that you're using exactly the same material settings on all objects. Then "batch" your veg objects with ModelConverterX. Doing it this way you can place hundreds of veg objects around your airport with just a single drawcall.

Jim

 

[bstikkel]

Thanks and questions

Hi Jim,

Thank you for answering my question.
I have a few questions about some terms you use and of which I do not know the meaning.

You suggest I import an existing object to obtain an allready available material. Is a material here the same a the texture file ?

The part about batching I do not understand.
What is the task of ObjectConverterX here ?

I do work with FS design studio from Abacus. To create the model itself, I first manually adapt the X-file, in order to obtain correct invisible parts of the object. After that I convert the X-file to a model using XtoModel from the FSX SDK.
The models I join to a bgl file using LibraryMaker from Instant Scenery.

Thanks in advance for your effort to make me understand ;-)

 

[JRobinson]

With "batching" I was referring to drawcall batching, there are a lot of threads here on the forums that go into great detail, but in short, it's possible to place multiple copies of a single model, or different models using the same texture, without generating a drawcall for each object as long as the material settings are identical between them all.

A material is the combination of a particular texture sheet and the settings that go along with it in the modeling program. Settings like specular color for example - you can build two different models that use the same texture sheet, but if you use a specular color of 64,64,64 on one model and 128,128,128 on the other you end up with two unique materials and each will generate it's own drawcall when you place both models in the sim.

Not sure about FSDS, but in gmax you can merge a part from an existing gmax file into a new gmax scene and it's material will be imported along with it. You can then delete the merged part leaving the material available to apply to another object within the scene. Those two models will then have identical material settings and can both be displayed in the sim on the same drawcall which has a big performance advantage especially if you place dozens of each as you would likely do with a vegetation object. They need to have drawcall batching enabled however and gmax isn't capable of doing that which is why they need to be processed through ModelConverterX. Again, not sure how FSDS handles this or if it's capable of batching a model.

You could achieve the same result I think by opening an existing model in the modeling program, saving it off under another filename, and issuing a new GUID. For a vegetation object made up of simple planes, a grass clump for example could be turned into a clump of wildflowers by simply moving the UVWs (texture mapping) to another part of the texture sheet and exporting as a new model. The material settings would remain identical.

That's my understanding anyway, I reserve the right to be wrong

Jim

 

[bstikkel]

Thanks again !

Hello Jim,

Thank you very much for your expanded explaination.
I will have to read it several more times before completely understanding it, but I think I allready grab the idea of batching and using one material for more objects.

Thanks again !
Bram Stikkel

 

[JRobinson]

You're quite welcome Bram