Texture confunsion /= ?

Hey, its probably a stupid question, but is it normal that my Xbox games texture change dramatically as I get closer to objects...

eg.

Playing CoD 4, as i get closer to an area, something pops up out of nowhere ( think of a bush, etc etc). It happens to every Xbox?

Very true!

Thanks alot, and you're right, SA had one of the worst pop up issues I've seen.

It's not normal per se. It's a disadvantage of certain commonly used methods of improving performance for LoD and distance textures.

A lot of games save on memory by using a low res texture from a further distance. And then loading the higher res texture when you get closer, however because of the way a lot of engines work (most prominant nowadays in the UE3 engine) sometimes textures just dont load when they should and either stay low res, or appear to 'pop' in from nowhere.

Speculation puts this at a number of points, some people claim it's because the textures must be loaded from the disc instead of an HDD, and sure, that might not help, but this happens even on high end PCs on games such as Bioshock and Gears etc.

Theres nothing wrong with your game, or your xbox ;)

"some people claim it's because the textures must be loaded from the disc instead of an HDD"

diablobasher

So why not do it that way then?

It's been said that for example GTA4 will have one big load screen in the beginning, and supposedly you play the entire game without an additional load screen (Which I highly doubt, specially on laborious missions), but then again is a next-gen system, so it wont be as much of a issue as VC and SA had.

[QUOTE="diablobasher"]

"some people claim it's because the textures must be loaded from the disc instead of an HDD"

akalelo

So why not do it that way then?

It's been said that for example GTA4 will have one big load screen in the beginning, and supposedly you play the entire game without an additional load screen (Which I highly doubt, specially on laborious missions), but then again is a next-gen system, so it wont be as much of a issue as VC and SA had.

In the rest of my post, i pointed out how that is not the case. Or not the sole reason for it. So it makes very little difference, it's to do with the way the game engines work.