[Mike V Madd]

Hi all!
So, with the new Dallara F3 series on SRS using the new F317 model of the much appreciated F3 series, I obviously had to make a new skin to represent myself as the old F312 model was different and the skins I had made on that model are not transferable. Doing so, a thought came across my mind concerning the maximum allowed size of custom skins...
As you all probably know, the price of storage memory has plummeted in the four-five years that AC has been around. Nowadays, you can buy a 1 Tb Hard Drive for only 50$ USD (I am aware that in some countries prices tend to be higher, but nonetheless prices have gone down) and that price excludes sales where this price dips even lower. Four years ago, storage was way less accessible than it is now, so it made sense to limit the max skin size to something small. Arguably, Internet speeds have also increased a bit in some parts of the world (RIP Australia), so the burden of spending time downloading larger skins is probably lessened (note that I don't believe Internet speed to be the limiting factor here as you need a decent connection to play the game itself). Maybe the time is right to increase the max skin size considering the affordability of larger storage and faster Internet in comparison to four years ago?
I'm not proposing a giant increase as to clutter everyone's AC folder with custom skins, but rather a small one to give a slight bit more creative freedom to those who, like me, just absolutely adore making custom skins but have to sacrifice quality to make them compatible with SRS. A simple increase from 10 Mb to 15 Mb would help skin creators either display higher quality skins online, create more intricate details across the many skinnable models present on an AC car or even play around with the reflectivity of the paint. Anyways, I'd love to hear what y'all think about this... I understand that there are undesirable downsides to increasing the max skin size, but shouldn't this just be a case of going with the times? Or, should we increase the cap, but by 2 Mb instead of 5? Discuss!

[James Blint]

I think the limit is rather to keep the memory low for everyone, as default Kunos skins are even lower than 10 MB usually. I would not mind either a limit increase as sometimes it gives me some small headaches or having to strip some cool bits (like better gloves, suits, etc..) but i understand if that makes the experience smoother for everybody that not everyone is throwing 4K skins, maybe for weaker systems.

[Russell Sobie]

There's been a few times where I've bumped right up against the 10MB limit, so I certainly wouldn't say no to a couple or 5 extra MB... but as James says, this is likely more about keeping performance up for folks with less than stellar GPUs without having people say "naw, I'll just not install the SRS Skin app because all these 4k textures kill my framerate."

[Mike V Madd]

Yeah, I guess I forgot about people's GPU limitations. Personally, I just never had to deal with issues regarding VRAM, as I went from a GTX 1060 3gb to a GTX 1070 ti in my three years as a simracer. However, I believe that there's also an argument to be made about the evolution of GPU's and VRAM in the four years AC has been around... When AC was release, if we disregard the NVIDIA TITAN (who can afford the TITAN series anyways), the best GPU you could buy was the 980ti, available at 549$ USD MSRP; it had 6gb of VRAM. Nowadays, you can get a GTX 1060 6gb from an NVIDIA partner for about 200$ new... Probably much cheaper on the used market. Same technology for less than half the price (if we're strictly talking about VRAM).

I never saw GPU memory as a bottleneck on this game as it is relatively not that graphically demanding (hi there SOL)... But for users with older tech I can see the problem. Sim Racing is meant to be for everyone... in a way it sort of opposes IRL motorsports which have a very real paywall.