[canonuk]

#2) Every single plane has a separate skin folder, and most of us have the same skins in different folders for similar variants. The same skin you use on a 109E4 will fit with an E7 (just like many other aircraft). So we are using a lot of memory just to use the same skins for similar planes. Many folks have 5-10GB of skins, and a huge portion are just "repeats".

It breaks my heart to hear people have this attitude As a skinner and nerd for historical accuracy, I would never even dream of using a Bf 109E-4 skin on anything other than a Bf 109E-4. Sheesh....

On the issue of larger skins, I could imagine a possible workaround would be possible if when the modeller mapped a new aircraft, different 1024x1024 textures were used for different areas. For example, the wings could have a dedicated 1024x1024 texture etc. This is already done to a limited degree on certain aircraft. For example, the Bf 109s use the main skin for everything except the wheels, which are mapped to a different texture. This would be easiest to implement on fully new builds. A downside would be the need to have many templates for one whole aircraft, and would probably slow everything down quite a bit.