Active Texture Management now useless?

[A_name]

I came across this comment on the subreddit where the commenter seems to imply ATM is useless as of 1.0 and may actually be counterproductive. Anyone know what's the deal with this?

[Randazzo]

ATM worked by pre-converting textures to DDS and reducing their resolution (depending on which version of ATM you got)

Since (theoretically) all textures are now already in DDS format, it doesn't do much on that front. It could still save by reducing texture resolution, I imagine, but whether or not that is offset by having ATM and it's cache I wouldn't know.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Randazzo

[Thomassino]

Yeah, It could be true. I was recently testing a new install with some mods. When I loaded it up (without ATM) RAM usage went to 3,1GB in main menu. When I installed ATM and restarted, RAM usage was 3,25GB.

[Stone Blue]

If you run older mods that still work, but that have not been converted to .dds, it may still be useful in those cases... I try to convert any old mods I use to .dds using the converter, but some have texture names hardcoded into .dlls, so conversion wont work... I suppose if there enough non-converted textures remaining, there might be a use for ATM... But with more & more older mods becoming unusable due to more and more changes in KSP releases, even these rare cases are becoming less & less... So yes, ATM's usefulness IS quickly fading away into total obsolescence...

Now there may be another mod just as groundbreaking, rising from from the ashes: Dynamic Texture Loader

Edited January 3, 2016 by Stone Blue

[NecroBones]

 

The author has left ATM in disrepair, since it's pretty useless now, yes. Most people who compare their RAM usage both with and without ATM usually see that ATM is actually costing them more memory. As mentioned above, DTL is the one to use now.

 

Neither one is without caveats though. Longer load times, for instance. Also both have had caching issues with textures that are used by more than one mod pack simultaneously, such as with SpaceY Expanded using the textures from SpaceY Lifters.