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FSXA Texture Question

mmann

mmann

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ca-britishcolumbia
I have a single texture sheet that contains coverage for all my lighthouse station models (lighthouse, lightkeepers house, sheds and heli platforms). I originally used a DXT1 compression and everything was fine until I decided to use transparent windows on the lighthouse itself. I then had to add an alpha channel and go to DXT5. My question is; would it now be more efficient to separate the textures into two sheets, one for all the models without an alpha and one for the lighthouse itself?

Mike Mann
 
The alpha will give some overhead, but having two drawcalls also gives overhead. I agree with Bill that it is better to keep one material.
 
So even though I have seven models using the one texture and only one model requires the alpha, it is still best to use the texture with alpha for all seven?

Mike Mann
 
Depends a bit. Are the models close to each other? If they can be on screen at the same time you can benefit from drawcall batching if they have exactly the same material.

Else you can use the same texture for all, but in the material settings only enable the transparency for the one that needs it.
 
Although all the models can at times be seen together on one screen, each is a separate model (i.e. they each have a separate 3ds Max file). I of coarse used ModelConverterX to create a single library bgl of the seven models to place in my scenery folder.

Mike Mann
 
Hi,

I guess you could benefit from drawcall batching in that case. So then I would use the same material in all of the objects. That would probably be better for the performance.
 
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