Supporting 4096x4096 textures on different devices

**AGulev** · September 20, 2017, 9:39am

I made small research about supporting of 4096x4096 textures on different devices.

iOS
Any ios device starts from iphone4s and ipad2 supports 4096x4096

(Source)
Android
Top Android GPU I took here.

Sources:

http://gles3mark.appspot.com
http://feedback.wildfiregames.com/report/opengl/feature/GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE
And many googling…

HTML5

Webstats statistics : https://webglstats.com/webgl/parameter/MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE

Hope it will be useful for somebody

Conclusion (imho)

Today, almost all modern devices are supported 4096x4096 textures. If you have no plans to supports really old devices you can use 4k atlases instead 2k

**Mattias_Hedberg** · September 20, 2017, 8:56am

Great write up! I want to add that you may also take memory consumption into account. A 4k texture is 4 times as big in memory compared to a 2k one. So it could still be worth to use a 2k texture on high end devices if you can fit everything from a scene on it and thus avoid having them all in memory.

Oversimplified example: If your game has 4 “screens” that all uses about 2k of textures each. You could add them all to a 4k texture and have all that in memory at all times or you can set your atlases up so that each “screen” uses a 2k texture. In the first case we have a bit over 64MB of textures in memory (assuming 32-bit color) and in the second case we have a bit over 16MB in memory the downside being that we have to load the atlases in and out (and could also a bit hard to work with).

Of course if memory isn’t a problem for you than you don’t have to think about this at all.

**AGulev** · September 20, 2017, 9:01am

Fully agree with you, of course! I told only about possibility of using 4k atlases when it really need for example when you have 5 2k atlases that can be one 4k etc.

It’s only about possibility to run game with 4k atlases on devices in case when developer sure that he need 4k.

**AGulev** · September 20, 2017, 12:44pm

One of developer shared info, that on Steam still enough PC’s that do not supports 4k atlases and he remade his game to 2k atlases.

**britzl** · September 20, 2017, 4:12pm

Really? That’s surprising that many desktop GPUs don’t support larger textures. I’m assuming that it’s cheap integrated GPUs and not dedicated cards?

**AGulev** · September 20, 2017, 4:15pm

Surprise for me too, but for now I have no time and motivation for checking this information. Maybe later i’ll recheck this info.

**Pkeod** · September 20, 2017, 7:27pm

China has a large relative market share on Steam. Lots of old PCs there. But lots of good PCs there and people who will buy games properly localized.

**AGulev** · September 21, 2017, 7:26am

Need to check this list http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ for understanding how many users have video cards that don’t support 4k textures

**britzl** · September 21, 2017, 8:32am

Yep, quite a good list. I’m sure it’s possible to write a script that makes the lookup. Looking at WebGL stats in general will give information about max texture size as well:

https://webglstats.com/webgl/parameter/MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE

That’s stats from around 30 sites. It would be interesting to get stats from game focused sites though…

**AGulev** · September 21, 2017, 8:35am

mmm, i already has this link in main post =)

**sven** · September 21, 2017, 8:36am

Any idea regarding the sudden drop in 8k support around 2017?

**britzl** · September 21, 2017, 8:38am

Oh, yes you do!

**AGulev** · September 21, 2017, 11:00am

Ok, I asked him to provide me more info, and he told that it was in 2014. That mean that this question have to be rechecked before make some conclusion.

**britzl** · September 21, 2017, 12:22pm

Ah, ok. And based on the WebGL stats that was around 6% of the stats for 2014. It is unlikely that Steam players have worse gaming rigs than the average WebGL stats user, but anyway, let’s say that the number was three times higher for Steam users, meaning 18% of users. In 2014 that was surely worth the effort, but it’s probably the case that the number around 3-5% today in 2017. But checking against the Steam list you provided will verify this.

**BunBunBun** · November 11, 2020, 7:02am

does anyone have actual statistics about the supporting max texture size in 2020? particularly interested in web platform.

**britzl** · November 11, 2020, 7:18am

There used to be a WebGL stats page at https://webglstats.com/webgl2/parameter/MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE but it seems like the site doesn’t work anymore.

**BunBunBun** · November 11, 2020, 7:25am

yes, I checked that site before too. that’s why I decided to ask here, may be there are alternatives.