MOBILE TEXTURE COMPRESSION: ASTC, ETC2 & MIPMAPS
Slash mobile VRAM consumption by 75%, reduce thermal GPU throttling, shrink build download sizes, and eliminate stutter during asset loading.
1. Why Mobile GPUs Require ASTC Formats
Unlike desktop GPUs with dedicated high-speed GDDR6 memory buses, mobile chipsets (Snapdragon, Mali, Apple A-series) share unified system RAM with the CPU.
Uncompressed textures (RGBA32) must be transferred uncompressed across the mobile system bus every single frame, generating high memory bandwidth load that quickly triggers thermal throttling (causing your game to drop from 60 FPS down to 25 FPS after 3 minutes of play).
ASTC (Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression) stays compressed in VRAM and is decompressed on-the-fly directly inside GPU hardware texture units.
2. Recommended ASTC Block Formats
Best For: Normal maps, main cockpit instruments, UI vector art, hero aircraft liveries.
Best For: Environmental diffuse/albedo textures, terrain masks, building facades, projectile VFX.
Best For: Background clouds, skyboxes, distant LOD textures, smooth ambient occlusion maps.
3. Mipmaps: Memory vs Performance
Mipmaps are pre-calculated, scaled-down copies of a texture (e.g. 1024x1024, 512x512, 256x256...) generated down to 1x1.
- For 3D Models: Always check Generate Mip Maps. It costs 33% extra VRAM but massively boosts GPU texture cache hits and eliminates visual texture shimmering/moiré patterns in the distance.
- For 2D UI Sprites: Always disable Mip Maps. UI elements are rendered at 1:1 screen pixel ratio; generating mipmaps for UI wastes 33% memory for zero visual benefit.