I'm currently using ground quads that are 10 d3d units across, at a scale of 1 d3d unit = 1 foot. I'm using 256x256 ground textures. I'm tring to get the size of the image on the texture at the correct scale, so it looks the correct size in the game. In essence, my grass is too big. I've made a texture that looks good - correct size and such. but its 1024x1024. Using it that way lookspretty good, but scaling it down to a 256x256 texture makes it blurry in the game.
What sizes are typical for ground quad and its ground texture? in the past i've experimented with large textures. as i recall 2048x2048 worked, and 4096x4096 didn't. But that may have been a limitation of the old GPU.
Are my ground quads bigger than usual? is everyone using 512x512 ground textures at a minimum these days?
This is the old issue of "a five foot texture, and a ten foot rock". IE your mesh is bigger than the texture image, and trying to get it to look good. The only answers i've found in the past are get a bigger texture,or a smaller rock, or both, or live with the blurriness - once you've done what you can with MIP level bias.
should i knock it down to some thing more like 1 meter per quad (2.5 feet would make the numbers work out nicely).
or should i continue to try to find photos at a large enough scale such that 10 feet of grass in the photo is 256 pixels? aerial photos are too big a scale, about 50 pix or less per 10 feet. grass textures tend to be too small, more like 10,000 pix per 10 feet. i got something decent looking by creating a 1024x1024 from a pretty large scale 800x500 photo, and a lot of clone stamp! <g>.
I've tried tiling the textures using DX, but Moire' patterns are an issue. a typical grass texturre at 256x256 needs 4x or 5x texture scaling to be the correct size. so my texture image is essentially 2 feet wide, while the quad is 10 feet wide.