What exactly is this Direct X 11 and what will it do?

[Bishop81]

I think Yoshida is smoking some good crack when he said textures don't matter. Either that or I just didn't quite get his emphasis (imo it came across as "don't matter", maybe I misread).

I notice low res textures all the time in ARR, best strategy to avoid that is to keep your camera away from objects but.. that solution makes sense (don't look closely lol).

Its not the worst thing ever though, in battle or far camera scene shots I doubt you'd ever notice lol.

There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

Is it worth it for the few moments where your camera does end up close to a surface?

I'm not saying blurry textures are good, they aren't. Just that there is a price to pay for good textures.

[Shougun]

There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

Is it worth it for the few moments where your camera does end up close to a surface?

I'm not saying blurry textures are good, they aren't. Just that there is a price to pay for good textures.

Oh yeah definitely there is always a cost to quality (and some qualities are too expensive), I wouldn't include a super highres in the default package but to say they don't matter. . . ?

I don't know about the average PC setup, but I'm pretty sure my PC could handle another GB or two and not care (GPU, not referring HDD/SSD). Would take a lot of work to repackage an enthusiast texture pack, a lot (unless already ready, for some reason), but I still don't think it is fair to say textures are not important anymore. Which again could be my misinterpretation of what he said. Lighting and mappings (technically comes in a resolution) are obviously important too.

[Bishop81]

Oh yeah definitely there is always a cost to quality (and some qualities are too expensive), I wouldn't include a super highres in the default package but to say they don't matter. . . ?
...

Well ... given that the camera is at a distant most of the time ...does it really matter that much?

Also I wonder with DX11 coming, how much VRAM they really have to spare. DX11 effects might end up using even more memory (more and higher quality render targets).

Increase texture resolution also means you have to add more mipmaps to prevent texture aliasing - that obviously cost memory too. (To be blunt, FFXIV could use a few more mipmaps, or maybe it's just the LoD bias set wrong, as texture aliasing is quite severe as it is.)

FFXIV to my knowledge uses about 600-900MiB of VRAM at the moment. I have a 2GiB card. How much of an improvement will we see if they double the number of pixels in the textures ... it's hard to tell - might even be barely noticeable.

[Shougun]

Well ... given that the camera is at a distant most of the time ...does it really matter that much?
Also I wonder with DX11 coming, how much VRAM they really have to spare. DX11 effects might end up using even more memory (more and higher quality render targets).
Increase texture resolution also means you have to add more mipmaps to prevent texture aliasing - that obviously cost memory too. (To be blunt, FFXIV could use a few more mipmaps, or maybe it's just the LoD bias set wrong, as texture aliasing is quite severe as it is.)
FFXIV to my knowledge uses about 600-900MiB of VRAM at the moment. I have a 2GiB card. How much of an improvement will we see if they double the number of pixels in the textures ... it's hard to tell - might even be barely noticeable.

My Camera isn't at a distance all the time though XD. I'm tight on the shoulder or for the fun of it FPS'ing it up, when not in combat. Maybe I'm playing the game wrong lol.

Also Bethesda mods have taught me when it doesn't look pretty throw bigger numbers* at it, 4096x4096 everything! Candle? 4096. Cloud? 4096! Whats that, you can see the pixels on your flora? Redo the model and 4096! Ok well maybe not that far.. but.. I've seen the power of the numbers XD (also that is a srpg game designed for fps/tight shoulder, so again maybe I just play FFXIV wrong lol).

*And an ENB

[coldreactive]

*And an ENB

Good thing FFXIV can use ENBs right now. Though doing so may cause Carbuncles and summons to become 1000W Bulbs.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

loading would probably be faster because it takes far longer to read small files from a HDD than it does bigger files.

[Bishop81]

loading would probably be faster because it takes far longer to read small files from a HDD than it does bigger files.

Firstly, that makes no sense.

Yes, it's slower to read many small files scattered all over the disk then one large file that is properly defragmented. But if we increase the texture res, it would just mean the "many small files scattered all over the disc" becomes "many large files scattered all over the disc".

Secondly, it's highly likely that SE pack textures together - i.e. all the textures that need to be loaded together are in one file.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Firstly, that makes no sense.

You don't understand how block reads work.

Larger files allow the offset to be cached and mapped removing the need for directory traversal within the package file.