Memory use by Animated Textures (Legacy)

Animated textures use dynamic video memory and system memory.

Dynamic video memory

• Dynamic video memory contains texture data when it is drawn on the screen.

• For each format of animated textures that is used, a texture is created in video memory. This includes size and color format.

• If two animated textures that do not center with each other use the same texture format, only one texture will be created in video memory. If all animated textures have different formats, a multitude of textures would be created, thus filling the video memory.

• It is a best practice to use the least possible texture formats in the same scene.

System memory

• System memory serves as a cache for the textures already used, and which are presumed to still serve.

• When an animated texture is needed, it is loaded into system memory and then transferred to video memory. Textures loaded in system memory remain there as long as there is available space or until no one uses them anymore. When you need a texture, you do not have to load it from the file.

• This memory, however, is not infinite. The memory limit must be specified with the i_sysMemMaxSize parameter. This parameter is present in the configuration file of the engine (usually it is config.xml). It indicates how much cache memory can use animated textures. The value is expressed in Megabytes, so 32 means 32MB, or 32 * 1024 * 1024 bytes.

• When the cache memory fills, the least-used textures are downloaded to make room for those just requested by the scene.