What causes texture pop-in in games?

[VaguestFuture]

As I'm playing games like GTA V, NFS Payback, or Forza Horizon 3, there seems to be quite a bit of texture pop-in (at long distances mostly but sometimes up close too) even though all the settings are maxed out. Could a slow hard drive be the reason?

[Phentos]

Texture pop-in in many games can be the result of a slow hard drive, yes. Especially if the game relies on streaming in new textures and models in real time (to cut down on loading screens).

 

Texture pop-in can also be the result of VRAM on your graphics card being topped out and the buffer overflowing into your much slower system RAM. However this can also cause stuttering which is just as obvious and noticeable as texture pop-in.

[VaguestFuture]

1 minute ago, Phentos said:

Texture pop-in in many games can be the result of a slow hard drive, yes. Especially if the game relies on streaming in new textures and models in real time (to cut down on loading screens).

Appreciate the help, I'll test some games on an SSD to confirm.

[PlayStation 2]

It's largely dependent on how fast the storage device the game is stored on and the speed the game can stream in those textures. A slow hard drive is most often the reason, but if the card is lacking in VRAM, it could be a factor too.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Texture pop-in may also result from the need to decompress textures (aside from the S3TC method). And I don't know if this happens on the software side or the GPU.

[Paul Rudd]

On 8/26/2018 at 11:34 PM, Vag said:

Could a slow hard drive be the reason?

Nope.

On 8/26/2018 at 11:34 PM, Vag said:

there seems to be quite a bit of texture pop-in (at long distances mostly but sometimes up close too) even though all the settings are maxed out.

I had this exact issue. What fixed it for me was in GTA 5, turn down distance scaling to around 10-30% and turn down extended distance scaling to 0-20%. You may still see texture pop-ins but this lowers the amount of times you see it happen dramatically. 

 

As for NFS Payback and Forza Horizon 3, look for similar graphic settings and turn them down.