Sprite asset with large "Max Size", but only uses part of it -- Any performance impact?

[crekri1]

In order to display crisp-looking sprite for wide phones, we decided to use 2340x1080 for our background sprite assets.

By default, sprite assets’ max size is 2048, which is too small for our background sprite. Thus, we set them to a max size of 4086. It looks nice and works smoothly in the game. However, it makes me wonder – is there any reason why the default max size is set to 2048 instead of 4086?

Doing some research, I suspect the reason is – To provide max compatibility on all devices, as some older devices could only support sprites of 2048, or even 1024.

Other than this, I wonder if there are any additional performance penalties with this approach.

• Maybe the way unity store my 2340x1080 sprite in memory is by storing it as a 4086x4086 texture, which wasted much memory?

Or am I just overthinking things? is setting a large max size for long / tall sprites a perfectly normal thing?

Thank you.

Some related threads:

Creating 2D game with a very long ground surface sprite

Hello, My 2d game consists of a very long “surface” sprite - with many hills and falls. This is eventually the ground surface where the players walks on (I define it as Poligon colider 2d). The height remains the same but the camera keeps track over the walking person horizontally. For that I created a very long sprite - 204800 (width) by 1024 (height). Of course that unity can’t have sprites longer than 4096, so I know I need to split them to (4096x1024). But then I need to place the sprites…

Creating 2D game with a very long ground surface sprite

Hello, My 2d game consists of a very long “surface” sprite - with many hills and falls. This is eventually the ground surface where the players walks on (I define it as Poligon colider 2d). The height remains the same but the camera keeps track over the walking person horizontally. For that I created a very long sprite - 204800 (width) by 1024 (height). Of course that unity can’t have sprites longer than 4096, so I know I need to split them to (4096x1024). But then I need to place the sprites…

[rarac]

yes it spends more memory

[crekri1]

Does anyone got any insight on this questions? I have yet to find any answer regarding this specific issue.

We have some sprites in our mobile game that barely exceeds the 2048 size settings (e.g. 2520x1080), and thus require us to use the 4096 max size options. Obviously it’s possible for us to downscale the texture to fit within the 2048 Max size, but I wonder if there will be a significant penalty (due to the way the texture is stored in memory) if I insist on keeping the 4086 max size option.

[rarac]

yes it spends more memory

[crekri1]

Yes I know it spend more memory - but my problem is will it have significant penalty?
Let’s say I have a texture of 2049x2048 – will it be padded and encoded as a 4086x4086 texture in memory? Or will it be stored at the exact dimension of 2049x2048?
I have found more threads related to this question now:

Custom Texture Max Size

Hey there! I’m trying to figure if there’s any way to have some custom texture max size (besides the default ones) in each texture. Just to be a little more clear, I want to put more different sizes on this menu. [5960633--639086--upload_2020-6-9_21-38-22.png] What I’m trying to achiev is having my let’s say 500x500 texture be resized to 80x80 (selectable in the menu). I know that I can duplicate it via code and the new one can have that size. But it would help a lot to just have a few mor…

Texture Max Size Value related Rule

What texture max size I require to set for each imported texture within the project? [4619431--432487--sprite properties.PNG] By default when I import the texture, it set 2048 as default value. If I don’t change this value then will it create any problem within graphics memory? Shall I require to change the size of each texture manually based on its size? As per above image example, I require to set texture max size to 64 because it’s limited to that bounds. Share your opinion regarding th…

And it seems like it’s a bad idea to use NPOT sprites and textures (Unless you pack them in a POT sprite atlas)
As for my larger textures, I think I will downscale it to a max size of 2048 as well.

Yet, I still have some related questions:
Some compression algorithms (RGBA Crunched ETC2) allows efficient compression of NPOT (but Multiple of 4) sprites - in this case, I suspect it’s fine for me to keep my 2520x1080 texture, right?