That's because 16k textures don't "exist" - 16k just increased the amount of how much it stayed in memory in this case , for PCs with plenty of RAM , EVERYTHING SHOULD STAY OR ADJUST FOR AVAILABLE RAM + option to set manually.
this should be made separate, another engineering design flaw - what the heck carmack ? This setting is weird , it does 2 things, we have no FLAGS to CUSTOMIZE how much it stays in memory , just some hardcoded thing, very bad indeed.
Im reporting this to the big issues list thread
16k textures and/or more will exist when they release super quality packs.
-----------------------------------
Funny how carmack says inpost-release responses, i know ID and Bethesda are in a lot of pressure so this is not to troll or criticize but this just shows you how people in dire situations tend to bring out weak excuses. I do talk somewhat angry but im the calmest guy here, i know editor is coming i know and paitent to wait and give this game a chance so im not quitting at all, this is all to try to help them actually.
I really appreaciate any response at all , but the funny thing is how easily the response can be countered. Obviously it's a stressful situation when the game launches like this.
This particular case
"Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases."
- Yeah your absolutely correct, Rage is brand new technology and has a crap options screen, it doesn't really matter how good technology is behind it, it's still crappier than even Far Cry or Call of Duty 2.

pwnd