ASTC control for game graphics in BlueStacks

Background

In 3D graphics, a texture is the digital representation of the surface of an object. In addition to two-dimensional qualities, such as color and brightness, a texture is also encoded with three-dimensional properties, such as how transparent and reflective the object is. Once a texture has been defined, it can be wrapped around any 3-dimensional object. This is called texture mapping.

Well-defined textures are very important for rendering realistic 3-D images. However, they also require a lot of memory. When playing games, high-resolution textures contribute to better graphics and a more immersive gaming experience. This is accomplished by allocating more graphics processing capability and more memory. 

The rationale for the development of the Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC),  is to reduce data size, memory footprint, and loading time, yet delivering high visual quality for a given texture and increase the game performance. 

Click here to see the difference in game visuals before and after enabling ASTC.

Purpose

When running on BlueStacks, games using ASTC texture compression for a realistic visual experience can have them be rendered directly by modern GPU’s, improving the overall responsiveness and performance for playing the game. 

Benefits

Most new games are using ASTC texture compression and this technical performance improvement enhances game play experience significantly.

BlueStacks versions affected

All versions of BlueStacks 4.150 and above.

Audience

All users of BlueStacks.

Geo’s affected

All Geo's

Steps

1) Open Settings from BlueStacks side panel or from the hamburger menu at the top right.

2) Click on 'Engine' and scroll down to get 'ASTC Texture (Beta'). By default, it is 'Disabled'.

Software decoding:

With software decoding, the CPU performs all the high-resolution texture decompression to compose and render the image.
 Enabling 'caching' will take some disk space but will improve the read/write operations from the CPU’s memory, improving the response time.

Hardware decoding:

With hardware decoding, the GPU is dedicated to render the compressed textures leading to a substantial improvement of the gaming experience. You will need to restart BlueStacks after selecting hardware decoding.

What's the difference?

The images below show the difference in the game visuals of State of Survival under different ASTC settings.

With ASTC Disabled:

With Software Decoding:

With Hardware Decoding:

With ASTC Disabled:

With Software Decoding:

With Hardware Decoding:

NOTE: If the GPU/graphics card on your PC does not support hardware ASTC, the ASTC Texture option will be greyed out. 

We genuinely appreciate your choosing BlueStacks. We hope you enjoy using it. If you have any further questions, please contact us at support at bluestacks dot com. Thank you very much.

Last Updated 30 Mar 2020