Total texture caching via vertical/horizontal offset

I was wondering .. is anyone loading all textures in at once on one page and then using vertical/horizontal offsets to ensure quick loading?

What sort of luck are you having with this?

What's the max size of a texture (width/height)

The max size of a texture is 1024x1024.

Yes, you could put lots of different images on a 1024x1024 image and offset the texture for each prim, and I've heard of people doing so, but at the end of the day, there is really little or no advantage to it.

I'm not an expert on jpeg compression or the exact specifics on how things load in SL--but I have read that there is a little or no difference between loading one 1024x1024 or four 512x512 images, etc.

To me, tho, the added logistics and organization of managing multiple faces on one image file would surely be cumbersome and too likely that part of the image would not get used in all cases, causing an extra load when it's not needed. Using smaller images files as appropriate works well for me. And when I want to borrow a small texture from another build, it's already there and doesn't require loading a large file to get a tiny portion.

Just my thoughts.

Hello, folks. Whilst I haven't used the multiple-textures-per-page method, I can say this much: 1024x1024 is NOT the maximum allowable resolution, as I have uploaded and used, un-rescaled, 2048x512. That it shows undistorted tells me a lot.
I am of the opinion that likely SL can accept even larger textures (though WHY I cannot imagine), such as 4096x256... Excellent for long, narrow murals, I suppose...
Hope this both confounds (for its' oddities) and enlightens (for said same reasons).

Yours,
Mika Kyubi (Muromachi)
Kitsune-at-Large
(Who wants her last name of Kyubi in SL!!!)

I don't want to encourage really huge textures, but the bigger ones also let you have high rez anims. A 4096X256 would give you 16 256X256 frames for example. There are other combinations that will achieve this too - 1024 X 1024 - but as a former flash animator I tend to think of animations in long strips rather than in squares...

Not wonderful but not too dire for one thing that actually needs that sort of resolution I guess.

Hmm, I never tried this before, but you're correct, Mika. I uploaded a 2048x512 test image, and the texture console confirms it remained at 2048x512 inworld. That lead me to belive that perhaps it's the total number of pixels that's important, not the length of any one side, meaning that 512x2048, 256x4096, 128x8912, etc. would all work since they're the same "size" as 1024x1024. However, upon further testing, that didn't turn out to be the case. Anything larger than 2048 on any side gets shrunk to 2048.

Apparently there is a new maximum side length of 2048 instead of 1024, and SL now allows textures at 2048x2048 without resizing them to 1024x1024. This is brand new behavior, and it's odd that it wasn't mentioned in any of the release notes. I can only wonder exactly which release this new size limit came in.

Now that the cat's out of the bag on this though, I feel duty bound to stress DO NOT UPLOAD 2048x2048 SIZED IMAGES!!!!!!

There's enough lag to deal with from the boneheads who overuse 1024's. I can't imagine what it's gonna be like with 2048-abusers now. Can you say snail speed? Because that's what you and everyone around you will experience if you start using 2048's. Don't use them, ever.

i think the topout is 2048x2048, or a 2 megapixel image, thats not only alot of data to transfer (really bad rez times) its alot of image for your video card to render...

512x512 or lower is usually the prefered standard..

in your example tho 2048x512 if you do the math on that it comes out to 1048576 pixels which is exactly the same as a 1024x1024 image, but its in widescreen.

going back to my 512x512 or lower statement, 512^2 is 262144 pixels, for a banner like above, you could use a 1024x128 pixel image and be 131072 pixels smaller than the 512x512 (half the pixels)

As far as i understand what really matters is the total pixel count someone let me know if otherwise.

Unoffically, color count does have a role in it too.
I use alot of computer generation software for things like my animated plasma dance floors. those images are rendered in 24bit 16 million color format (png)

But if i do a unique color count on them they range from thousands to millions of colors, and the ones that only contain thousands of colors will always rez faster than those using millions of colors.. sometimes by quite a few seconds.

As far as preloading textures its a dubble edged sword, its super if its just a few textures in the area, but lets say you have 30 vending machines loading 2 textures each (one shown, one "on deck" you now have to load 60 textures instead of 30 when you first walk in.

edited for unstable test results

regarding my previous post and the trick i removed

ive been passing around 2 different textures with 50/50 results , weird stuff ? but for now i will do more testing and edit my original post, maby takle it again when i know the exact magic

Thanks