So what is the trick to maintaining high detail in a texture when you are very close to it? I have a planet texture, but when you get too close to the planet, the texture looks blurry (just like when you zoom in close on the texture in Photoshop). It is 4096x2048, so it is as big as it can go in Unity. Is there anyway to maintain high detail when close to the planet, or is that a limitation of the engine?
Unless you use multiple textures, you can’t avoid it in your case. You can reduce blur by tiling a detail texture, but obviously those aren’t unique pixel patterns you’ll be seeing.
Games typically don’t let you zoom into gigantic objects.
It might be possible to do a fractal based shader, which would let you zoom in. IF you can find someone to write it and you can put up with the performance hit.
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/irg3/ws0405/cg/rcomp/29/x173.html