(2017-04-14, 23:34)End Unsure Wrote:(2017-04-14, 20:50)Roland Melkert Wrote: The main reason is legacy as LDraw was invented by James with vector 'decals' in mind (maybe even no patterns at all?). Also during that age hardware accelerated VGA was far from common (maybe the occasional extension card). So doing texturing in software only was way more work and might be too slow.
Now a days we do have a way to texture parts using png images, but many of the part modelers still prefer the vector based style as that often results in higher quality during zooming.
And also textured parts are not yet integrated in the official library part tracker.
So funny, I didn't even think about the zooming issue. Its so obvious and I deal with it all the time, I mean I use 8000x8000 textures to avoid that and I still get issues in fine detail areas.
Travis, your detailed answer was greatly appreciated and I enjoyed the history in it.
For the record, I read LDcad was preferable so I started with it and it works great so I never looked back.
My end conclusion however is that textures should continue to be done as they are due to resolution issues but if ever a day came that it was possible to easily make vector textures in a separate file format, it should probably be upgraded to that but yeah for now, this is the only way to go.
Maybe one day LDraw will support SVG decals. Though I don't think there would be any benefit over current methods.