MegaTextures by id Software is back on the console thanks to SSDs

The next generation of consoles will implement SSD drives, adapting to modern times. These types of storage drives, already standard in desktop computers for years, will bring some improvements to consoles. One of the most important improvements SSDs will offer is reduced loading times and the ability to create high-quality textures.

Sony and Microsoft have already talked about their SSD drives, including SSD-based 'memory cards'. John Carmack, founder of id Software has indicated that MegaTextures are back. A technology that allows the development of high quality textures without the need for repetition on the surfaces. The technology was discontinued because HDDs limited it and made it unfeasible.

High-quality textures on consoles thanks to SSDs

This MegaTextures technology was first implemented in the id Tech 4 graphics engine, which is developed and maintained by id Software. Its implementation allowed to develop textures of higher quality and improve the graphic environments. This offered, especially in open world games, it was very green in 2004, which was when it came out.

The best implementation of this technology can be found in RAGE, a 2011 game based on the id Tech 5 graphics engine. Under this graphics engine, the graphic quality began to show problems in terms of textures and especially in compression. I generated this technology quite a bad rap and it started to be difficult to move. All because mechanical hard drives offered very low operating speeds.

Additional texture quality thanks to new storage systems

Marc Fascia, Vice President of Technology at Splash Damage, indicates that MegaTextures could return thanks to the SSDs of the new consoles. It would not be this technology itself, but a derivative of it.

Some techniques like Mega Textures from Quake Wars could make a comeback. Mega Textures, also known as Partially Resident Textures / Partially Resident Textures, allow each object in the game to have its own unique set of textures, leading to richer, more varied and less repetitive visual details. To achieve this effect, the engine constantly introduces and extracts the texture fragments it needs to render what is on the screen and caches them. The speed with which data can be transmitted is vital for such a system to work.

In previous generations, it required a lot of custom optimization, but things could be drastically simplified with faster storage drives. It's interesting to see that both hardware vendors like NVIDIA or AMD like Unreal have been working in this area lately.

We actually completed the MegaTextures output, which allowed us to do more instance geometry, more instance texture, and tile texture, which also allowed us to have a higher fidelity texture. So, for the first time, I'd say we've really gotten away from that. I think in recent games the fidelity of our textures could be criticized for being a bit blurry. And I think DOOM Eternal is the first one where we're really back on top of the heap when it comes to texture fidelity.

SSD in the new generation of consoles

The Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 will use SSDs to offer better read and write speeds. In addition, both consoles have a custom I / O interface with their own compression and decompression blocks. This will allow to suppress any type of excess load in terms of decompression execution times.

PlayStation 5, for example, supports' zlib 'data compression libraries, a slightly faster protocol than RAD Game Tools' Oodle Kraken. For general textures, the Xbox Series X makes use of 'zlib', too. In the case of the Microsoft console, the BCPack compression system has been implemented to manage the GPU textures.

Source: wccftech