When comparing Active Texture Management vs Texture Replacer, the Slant community recommends Active Texture Management for most people. In the question“What are the best Kerbal Space Program mods?” Active Texture Management is ranked 9th while Texture Replacer is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Active Texture Management is:
All textures can be compressed & resized to save RAM. There are two modes of compression - basic and aggressive. Both compress to DXT and generate minimaps for all non-normal map textures, with aggressive mode having a max of 256x256 and basic mode having a max of 512x512 size for normal maps that it resizes to half the size.
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Pros
Pro Reduces texture memory use, including mod textures
All textures can be compressed & resized to save RAM. There are two modes of compression - basic and aggressive. Both compress to DXT and generate minimaps for all non-normal map textures, with aggressive mode having a max of 256x256 and basic mode having a max of 512x512 size for normal maps that it resizes to half the size.
Pro Can save vast amounts of space
In some cases up to 50% of space is saved.
Pro Aggressive mode eliminates the need for texture reduction packs for mods
Active Texture Management will optimize all textures to use less memory so there's no need to use separate texture reduction packs for each mod. It you choose to use texture reduction packs regardless, you might need to edit the config file at:
BoulderCo/textureCompressorConfigs/textureCompressor.tcfg
Pro Let's you change textures
Lets you change textures for Kerbals to make them more realistic or just funner.
Pro Diversifies your Kerbals
No longer do your crew only have 2 possible appearances!
Cons
Con Extremely outdated and unsupported as of 2021
Most mods use .dds texture format which ATM doesn't work for, and the plugin hasn't been updated to recent versions of Unity.
Con ATM becomes ineffective as most mods texture file use .dds format
Con Slight increase in initial game load time
Con Adding more system memory might be a better option now that KSP support 64 bit
Con Some bugs and issues installing textures
Sometimes it bugs and the textures are a bit hard to install.