Textures, and resolutions

[Wouter445]

my question is kind of simple yet difficult.

 

most people assume higher textures are better quality textures.

but is that really the case? let me explain.

 

you running a game on a resolution lets say the most basic 1080P. *1920x1080*

how much do you really befit from lets say 4K textures? i don't think anything higher then 2K will add

a judge-able quality to the game. it's like try playing a movie of 4K on a 1080P TV/Monitor you will not see any difference only the 4K looks more colorful

likely better native to true 1080P.

 

so what's the optimal texture Resolution VS native resolution?.

[obobski]

There's a flaw in your reasoning, namely that you're equating texture resolution to viewport resolution. They are not the same, nor are they directly comparable. High resolution/high quality textures will always impart better visual quality, even at the same viewport resolution. That said, there's not really a "need" for insanely high resolution textures (its largely just a "I want eye candy" thing) all over, and the performance impact is significant. It is probably fair to say that 2K textures are more than sufficient for the majority of objects, regardless of screen resolution (and many things use significantly lower resolution textures, and go entirely unnoticed - the recent obsession with "everything must be 4K textures" doesn't make much sense imho). The comparison to movie content is completely inaccurate and irrelevant (and there really isn't good "4K content" for any sort of meaningful comparison to be made currently - there's highly compressed streaming content but that isn't a fair comparison to HD-DVD/Blu-ray/Hi-Vision/etc).

Edited December 24, 2015 by obobski