In my opinion textures are the biggest weakness of games based on the Gamebryo-Engine.

Most textures were at one time high quality images which were then compressed to such extent that thousands of them would fit on 1 or 2 discs. Another reason for the compression is that most systems aren't capable of handling ultra high-res textures. But the quality of these textures suffers from the compression.

Of course there will be texture mods for FNV but what if OE simply released their own textures in a much higher quality than the standard high quality textures? This pack (let's presume it would be 10GB in size) would be hosted somewhere on the internet, OE and Bethesda could tie a licence to it and everything should be fine.

I don't believe it would take an experienced developer more than a day to batch the images and create such a pack.

What do you think?

Ultra High-Res textures are ridiculous and unnecessary. There are formulas to calculate the necessary resolution for any texture. These take into account the model size in game, how big it is, how important it is, how close the player will get to it, and how much screen space it will likely take up. Making textures too big only slows down the framerate, and offers literally no gain in image quality unless you stick the camera right up against the texture.

Even more than polygon counts, number of textures and their resolutions are the biggest factor in frames per second, with CPU calculations a close second. High res textures cause more pop-in, as it becomes difficult for your graphics card and RAM to hold all the massive uncompressed textures in their buffer at once, and they must unload and load up new textures more often.

A good normal map can also make a lower resolution texture pop, and the normal map doesn't have to be large either. Lighting makes the biggest difference in texture quality - textures do not need to be huge, and shouldn't be unless there is good call for it. I do this sort of thing for a living, and it is irresponsible to make huge textures. Every texture should only be as large as it needs to be based on the calculations I listed above, and no larger. I guarantee that you'll have a better experience with 1024 textures and a game running at 60-80 fps, versus one with 2048 and 4096 textures running at 20-30 fps.

I find the majority of the textures "improved" in this high-res mods foolish. People slapping 512 (or higher!) maps on things like jet, or stimpaks, or even putting 2048 textures on riverbed bottoms! You can't see the difference in quality unless you squat down and zoom in on the ground or object! "Well, I like to get that close, and it helps immersion", you may say. Well it also decimates your framerate for no good reason. Even if you have the "frames to spare", you are getting no good return on your trade.

And how is Bethesda or Oblivion supposed to distribute these gigabytes worth of textures? Another disc, or hosting them for download? Both would be a massive waste of money for the companies, because they are professionals who understand the things I have stated above.

If you want different textures for an object, that's great, it is your prerogative. I have different textures on cigarettes and books and alcohol bottles. But to make use of some of the 2048 and 4096 textures I see in these high res packs, you would need to be using a resolution of 3280×2048 - which happens to be the highest resolution currently displayable on a single monitor, and mostly confined to expensive, specialized medical equipment. Anyone else using these textures are doing so just to say they are, it is the placebo effect - they believe they are getting a massive boost in image quality because they expect to with those high res textures. In exchange, they get lower frames per second, and longer loading times.

If you believe you must have "ultra" textures, go ahead, but don't expect professionals that know better to go along with the insanity.