Vanguard players worried on-demand texture streaming will cause lag issues

Liam Mackay
Shigenori Ota operator in cod vanguard

Call of Duty: Vanguard devs have confirmed that they’ve used on-demand texture streaming tech to reduce the game’s file size, but players are worried that it will cause packet loss and other lag issues.

Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War take up an enormous amount of space on consoles and hard drives, leaving little room for other games. To combat this, Vanguard devs have introduced new on-demand texture streaming tech that will download assets as you play, reducing its file size.

While many are glad to see Vanguard will take up less space, some are worried that if the texture streaming is forced, it will cause lag, packet loss, and other data issues.

Wade Jackson operator in call of duty vanguard

On-demand texture streaming was introduced to Modern Warfare and Warzone in 2020 to allow high-res textures without increasing the game’s file size. Black Ops Cold War took a different route, allowing players to download high-resolution texture packs to get 4K assets.

Sledgehammer confirmed Vanguard will use on-demand texture streaming, but some of the community would rather just install extra texture packs.

Reddit user benmetalhead said, “I really hope there are high resolution texture packs, because I want that upscaled 4k 120 with crisp details instead of going through packet loss.”

“If it is required, what a terrible idea,” explained another user. “If I want the game to take up a massive amount of space on my drive, so be it, it’s my choice.”

“Forcing me to constantly use massive amounts of data to simply play the game with decent graphics is absurd!” they continued. “Whilst I do have unlimited data, not everyone has unlimited data, not everyone has fiber, and no one wants their data being throttled because of this horrid texture streaming system. There better be an option to install all of the textures natively.”

Another user said that “I’d much rather the game take up my storage than stream them in and have it mess with my connection/hit detection.”

Sledgehammer said that “Players can choose to manage storage space and reduce the game’s overall file size during or after the pre-load,” but there’s no confirmation on how this will work. We’ll likely need to wait until the game’s November 5 launch to find out more.

For more Vanguard, you can check out all the changes made between the Beta and launch.

Image Credit: Activision

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About The Author

Liam is CharlieIntel's Editor who focuses on Call of Duty but also plays lots of fantasy RPGs or anything else in his massive gaming backlog. After graduating in Journalism from Edinburgh Napier University, Liam freelanced in games journalism before joining CharlieIntel in November 2020. You can contact Liam at [email protected].