Multiple textures of the same livery and system memory

[pms707]

OK so here's an interesting question. If I create three separate textures for my UA 727-100 with slightly different livery variations, weathering, and different registrations, will the system (FSX in this case) use three times the resources to fulfill the requirement for that particular model/airline vs having just one texture for as many planes that are called up to fulfill any given AI traffic requirement for that airline/model?  In other words, do both scenarios require the same allocation of RAM, even if it's only one single texture (repeatedly applied to say, five identical 727s necessary to fill the traffic bgl)? Or does the system use less grunt to load one texture onto multiple different planes?

[FSMuseum]

You'll consume more resources by having more than one variation of an airline versus one texture to represent the fleet. It's a whole separate bitmap that has to be loaded by the renderer.

The extra RAM usage will be whatever is equivalent to another drawcall for the particular type in question. For AI airplanes this is small, however if you're using flyable models for AI (typically having many separate textures) it could be quite large.

[pms707]

Thank you!