On computers today, all of main memory is equal. An array is an array is an array. The functions need a pointer to some data organized in a specific way. They don't care what you did to organize the data in the right way, all that matters is that it is formatted as expected.

In runtime no, in editor yes. Well… yes for standard textures (virtual textures no - you wouldn't be able to fit them in memory).

This could run into problems when assets are too big - my point is, that it is managed and dynamic (which I guess is what you want). Easy to switch between those 2 approa…

@Annisquam17 OMG, I had gone over the code a million times, and going through the code one more time to add a few mor debugging statements and make sure everything was right, I noticed this line:

subData[i*mipLevels].pSysMem = imageDataArray[i*mipLevels];

that should read:

subData[i*mipLevels].pSysMem…

Profile the program. It's the only way to know for certain.

Unity has a built-in profiler that can give you a lot of data. Pix is a free profiler from Microsoft that can also reveal issues, and is especially focused on graphics profiling but can also tell a lot about the game when configured properl…

Aressera said:
Here is a real picture of water to illustrate the correct behavior.

Yes, I've spent a fair amount of time studying why we see the stretched specular reflections on a sunset over water and I understand the reasons why it happens.  I just hadn't considered that the microfacet calcs …