Right, say I have an initial scene that sets the quality to fastest. If I then load a new scene will the textures in that scene that will be loaded already be the smaller size OR will the full scale textures be loaded into memory and then shrunk?
no one knows?
Well, Video memory will be reduced for sure. I doubt the RAM usage itself will be reduced by it, because the texture “size” comes from using a higher mip-map level (mipmap 0 = full texture, mipmap 1 = 1/2 size, mipmap 2 = 1/4 size, mipmap 3 = 1/8 etc.).
That being said, only textures who have mipmaps enabled, will be affected by this QualitySettings. Textures w/o mipmap will always look same (i.e. GUI textures) and will never get reduced in size.
But it’s best you test it for yourself. Load a scene with many different textures. Measure then measure the scene loading/switches, preferably on mobile devices
wait- I thought mipmaps were only used if an object was “far away”. are you sure? I thought this was done separately
No, they are not only used if the object is far. They are also used if the view angle of the object is very low too.
But the Texture quality settings works with mip-maps. You can try it yourself. Select a texture and remove mip-mapping from it and it won’t be affected by the Quality Settings anymore.
Edit:
It definitely lowers the VRAM usage, and should improve because less data is sent to the graphic processor and makes sense on PC. But I don’t see any performance gains on Android (having full, 1/2 or 1/4 textures doesn’t change FPS in any way).