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Goody, goody!
(I, however, do have to admit that I'm probably going to crushing them down to 2048 either for personal use or to keep the download as lean as possible.)
Have you considered using an auto installer? You could allow for the option for both x2048 and x4096
It has many benefits with keeping the download size on the lower end of things...
If you would like I could help you with this?
These skins are still 'on the go' [waiting for the text-note details]... and are currently extended bitmaps [8,8,8] which at 4096 makes them 65,537 kb ... [big] but they're 'loss-less' that way until completion. Then they'll be flipped into DXT5 dds to lighten the load. Then they'll be a quarter the 'weight' at 16,385 .
If you shrink them to 2048 you'll lose the 'per-pixel' clarity through whatever 'dither' is used..... kinda counter-productive..... and you'll never really know whether or not that note on the fuse says "WARNING This Airplane contains a canopy release containing an explosive charge' or 'FOR a good time ring 555 123456 and ask for Trixie'....![]()
No auto-installers. They are okay for payware, but they are doing nothing for furthering people's aptitude with handling simple "Read The F'in Instructions" and file and folder movement tasks.
I'd love to use .7z as an archive format as it compresses way better than .zip, but then I'd get tons of questions akin to "Why can't I open this?!"...
Well, I'd include 2048 versions of the defaults and you can just offer a 4096 replacement version of these skins here in the library. All people would have to do then is overwrite the default bitmaps and be done with it.
I don't care much for user aircraft texture resolution when all other aircraft in the smulator are using 1024x1024 textures.
The current memory load per paint (minus shared textures) at 1024 px is 2.6 MB. Even compressed to DXT5, each 4096 paint (two main textures per paint plus a spec and bump map for each) would take up to 2*3*16=96 MB, while a 2048 paint only comes in at 2*3*4=24 MB. At 5 default paints, a 4096 version would amount to 480 MB for the repaints alone while the 2048 versions are 120 MB. At an overall compression ratio for .zip for around 50%, a download with 4096 px paints would amount to around 280 MB while for 2048, it's only 104 MB. Now imagine that I have to upload this to a limited amount of webspace every time I modify the release package and you can see why I am NOT a fan of legible "555-CALL ME" stickers on aircraft!
Bjoern ...if you're wishing to use these 'reworked' defaults as part of your package I'd certainly shrink them to 2048 for you to be sure they're a smaller download. I do get a bit complacent re graphic load as my machine is somewhat 'high-end' [as a home build it cost me just over $7k AUD].
Re the legible stickers...you don't need to read them because you have all the '555-CALL ME' stickers as fridge magnets...![]()