> Extreme draw distance can mean keeping orderS of maginitude more objects resident, which could mean a lot more materials loaded, more draw calls, more VRAM usage, or more swap.
The point is that all of this merely requires more resources at runtime, not any additional work on behalf of the developer. So, by allowing limits higher than is practical on hardware at the time of release, the game can scale somewhat better on future hardware. What's the downside?
High-res textures are a different thing, since they actually have to be painted. Or upscaled, I suppose, but that's still code somebody has to write.
> High-res textures are a different thing, since they actually have to be painted.
Ah, I want to clarify again—I was imagining the developers already had higher quality original textures, which they had downscaled for release. The textures in Assassin's Creed II, for instance, have the look of images that were saved down to a lower resolution from larger originals. But I could be wrong, or even if I'm not, it might be less common nowadays.
As you say, the goal is to include things that only require computational resources at runtime (even an order of magnitude more).
The point is that all of this merely requires more resources at runtime, not any additional work on behalf of the developer. So, by allowing limits higher than is practical on hardware at the time of release, the game can scale somewhat better on future hardware. What's the downside?
High-res textures are a different thing, since they actually have to be painted. Or upscaled, I suppose, but that's still code somebody has to write.