> The result was visually striking. Repeating tile patterns disappeared, and artists could paint unique detail across large environments without concern for reuse. The primary cost was not GPU throughput, but latency elsewhere in the system.
No, the primary "cost" was artists having to fill a world with unlimited textures instead of just filling memory and then having to make due.
The constraint of "limited texture memory budget" also puts a constraint on how much work the artists can do. Remove that constraint lets artists do unlimited work. It might sound like a plus because "freedom!" but it turns into a minus trying to actually ship on time and at budget.
I get that wasn't the point of the article's "cost", but thought it was worth mentioning.
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