Max shadow map texture size?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Max shadow map texture size?

Stevie G(Posted 2006) [#1]
I have an idea for a new shadow system for my current verlet car program ( not of the stencil variety :( ) but it will rely on a fairly big texture for the shadows.

Would using 2048x2048 be pushing the boundaries a bit too much for most older gpu's? What sizes do others use?

Cheers
Stevie


Mustang(Posted 2006) [#2]
Depends - what's your definition of the "old gpu"? Blitz should scale the texture down automatically if the card can't handle it so I think it's win-win situation: old gpus get what they can chew and newer ones get bigger maps. I would use 2k maps for this purpose happily.


t3K|Mac(Posted 2006) [#3]
on my laptop i get a very dramatic speed decrease when i use 2048 maps. from 30 fps down to 5 fps. if i reduce texturesize to 1024 i still get 30 fps. i am using intel integrated i915GMS. i would stick to 1024 if possible. perhaps make it an option.


Ross C(Posted 2006) [#4]
What if though, the card can handle large texture sizes, but it takes up say half the VRAM? I imagine that being slowwwwwwwwwww.


Rroff(Posted 2006) [#5]
Probably a good idea to make it a user option, my card can handle 4096x4096 textures and pretty much every video card on the market today has 128+Mb RAM and support for atleast 2048x2048, so any one even if limited to a PCI slot could get a graphics card that would play it fine for around £30 in the UK and about $40 in the US.

Tho not sure how well that would count for laptops but then most laptops were never designed with gaming in mind...


Stevie G(Posted 2006) [#6]
Yeah Ross, was a bit worried about vram usage as I need to force it to be held in there for copyrect speedups.

It seems that a gfx440mx can't use textures beyond 2048x2048 so I'll stick to that as a max res .. with option to go down to 512x512.

Cheers folks.

Stevie