addon manager and changing vas usage during runtime

[stook2005]

Hey,

Purchased  KJFK, KIAH, KLAS, and CYVR and I noticed Vancouver allows you to choose vas usage during installation.  I'm curious if it is possible to add this vas usage option at runtime. 

-Jimmy

[virtuali]

I'm curious if it is possible to add this vas usage option at runtime.

This has been already discussed and answered here:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,7960.msg88500.html#msg88500

It must be done at install time to preserve the maximum texture quality, because they are not just resized, but regenerated in the correct resolution starting from their original sources, which is better than keep resizing them up/down, and it's better than storing all the different size variation of the textures, so none of your hard drive space is wasted for a resolution you don't use at this time.

Note that, if you install 4096 textures, but set the texture resolution to 2048 or 1024, you WILL save memory, but the textures might load a bit slower (because the file *IS* larger), you will waste some hard drive space, and the visual result won't be as good as if the texture was regenerated from scratch in the desired resolution, which is what the installer does.

Also, the installer gives you the flexibility to choose the resolution of the buildings, the ground polygons and the dynamic shadows separately, compared to the HD texture resolution option in the Addon Manager, which will set *everything* at 1024, 2048 or 4096.

[stook2005]

Since hard drive space is not a concern for me, is there an option to install all 3 resolution versions and select it during runtime? 

[virtuali]

Since hard drive space is not a concern for me, is there an option to install all 3 resolution versions and select it during runtime?  

No, there isn't, and we don't have plans to add it.

Letting you select the resolution in game would require to have multiple variations of the objects, and increasing the number of items in the Simobject library, will slow down the startup of the sim (like having more AI installed), the time it takes to open the select airplane page, and the time it takes to create the objects, because the required one would need to be found under a bigger list so, in general, we try NOT to increase the number of installed Simobject if it's possible.

It's not just "3x the objects", it's all combination of different resolutions, multiplied by the different times of the day, due to the dynamic shadows variations.

There's always a reason why we do things in a certain way, and not in another...