They’re typically optimizing for fidelity and performance ahead of install size. Multiple LODs can balloon an install size quite quickly, but they’ll give you better bang for your buck in other areas, and storage space is a concern that dissipates more in time, as you upgrade to newer machines.
I have seen this theory floated a few times. The problem is that reading uncompressed files from disk can often be slower than reading less data and decompressing it on the fly efficiently. Would be interesting to see actual studies of this for common game data.
It was faster to load the higher resolution data back in the early 2010s on HDDs, so I don’t imagine it got any better for using compression now that we’re on SSDs.
They’re typically optimizing for fidelity and performance ahead of install size. Multiple LODs can balloon an install size quite quickly, but they’ll give you better bang for your buck in other areas, and storage space is a concern that dissipates more in time, as you upgrade to newer machines.
I have seen this theory floated a few times. The problem is that reading uncompressed files from disk can often be slower than reading less data and decompressing it on the fly efficiently. Would be interesting to see actual studies of this for common game data.
It was faster to load the higher resolution data back in the early 2010s on HDDs, so I don’t imagine it got any better for using compression now that we’re on SSDs.