Question

What is the best way to go about using large textures with opengl on android?

I want to load some background images for my game with my target resolution being 480×800. Going by the recommended 512×512 resolution cap, I’ve tried scaling the images down to 240×400 and having opengl scale them back up, but that looks like trash and I would rather keep them as high-res as possible. I’ve seen one or two other people talking about using 512×1024 so I’m wondering:

How many phones would actually have trouble handling these image sizes?

Would it be better to risk an OOM and use 512×1024 textures, or risk a performance hit by splitting the images in two and increasing opengl calls?

For consideration: In general I will only be using two other 512×512 atlases at a time (aside from the background), with a maximum of three on menu screens where framerate isn’t important.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I’ve experimented using large textures for for planets in my game. With two 1024×1024 hemispheres per planet and probably only one or max two planets visible at a time. Once in game, they render fine on my somewhat dated ZTE Blade running 2.1.

However, the load times were terrible (talking an extra 10 to 30 seconds for two large textures to load).