Megatexture

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One of the megatextures from dz_sirocco

A megatexture is a texture which is higher resolution than normal, but instead of using the increased resolution for increased fidelity, the texture scale is kept the same as (or lower than) a regular texture and the increased resolution is instead used for reducing tiling repetition on large surfaces. Megatextures often may be used in conjunction with a detail texture, which adds back detail that may be lost from stretching a texture across a large surface.

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Danger Zone map dz_sirocco uses two blended megatextures (one 1024x1024 and one 2048x2048) which cover the entire map, in conjunction with denser detail textures.

Unlike specialized engines designed for megatexturing, GoldSrc, Source, and Source 2 do not have methods of subdividing the texture to be streamed section by section as needed. As such, video memory limits may need to be taken into account.

Tip:Avoid using megatextures for atlases of small unrelated textures, as mipmapping will cause unrelated subtextures to blend into each other much more noticeably than atlased textures at normal resolutions. This issue can be avoided by disabling mipmapping for the megatexture, but doing so will introduce aliasing ("shimmering") when the texture is viewed at a distance.

External links

•  Megatexture on Wikipedia, discussing Id Software's specialized implementation of the technique.