I see a lot of confusion from a lot of people about what exactly the "High Res Package" is and how to tell if it is installed or enabled.
Many of us know that if you have 1024 or 2048 textures selected *AND* the high res pack installed then it is enabled. And while the automatic downloading of it might ease some of the confusion I still don't think it's quite enough.
I'd like to see a specific "enable Hi-res" option in the VIDEO SETTINGS menu. I think it should work like this:
-Have a separate checkbox for "Enable High Resolution Textures"
-When that box is checked the resolution drop down automatically selects 2048 Textures and a warning displays next to it, "If your computer performance suffers try selecting 1024 textures or disabling high resolution textures" or something of the like.
-When that box is unchecked the resolution drop down automatically selects 512 Textures and the warning states, "If your computer performance suffers try selecting 256 textures or fewer"
-If the high res pack has not yet been downloaded yet then a warning can state, "The high resolution pack will be automatically downloaded in the background while you play. In the mean time you will be playing at 512 textures" or something of the sort...
-OR-
You could just simplify the deal by adding "(High Resolution Textures)" next to 1024 or 2048 in the drop down menu. I just don't feel like it should be this complicated for new people to figure out.
I also thought that it would be cool to see a program that will run some tests using the AH game engine on people's systems to recommend the appropriate settings for optimal performance. It could automatically enable each feature one at a time and measure the FPS drop and come up with some kind of report that states what can be enabled and what can't...
