consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480, if not tripple (did the math already, dont feel like finding my calculator right now, but its up there somewhere). Now consider what you get: resize all the pixel maps by the same factor you sized up the screen, so you keep the same ratio and effects dont look incredably tiny. At the same time, if you dont scale up the texture maps, what do you get when you close in on a ship? no better quality. the only thing that would benefit from 1024*768 is the backgrounds and a few effects, but they look fine already on most monitors, 640*480 is more than enough for that. Now if you scale up all the maps, somewhere like 60-100 or so (correct me if im wrong on this), you're puting in a lot of time and bigger maps like that will cost memory when the engine renders them. Keep in mind your goal: better resolution in game. If you dont scale up the texture maps for the ships, you gain nothing. look at it this way: 1024*768 does NOT increase the resolution on maps unless the maps them selves is higher, the only time you'll see the maps better is at great distances when the pixels merge more, but thats why they invented the lod. Unless you have something larger than a 17inch screen, you wouldnt notice the changes if you just change the screen. If you increase the maps, it'll look better at closer distances, but like i said, thats more memory ingame.
hope that made sense to you.
