When comparing ScanSat vs Active Texture Management, the Slant community recommends ScanSat for most people. In the question“What are the best Kerbal Space Program mods?” ScanSat is ranked 6th while Active Texture Management is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose ScanSat is:
You can create detailed maps of every planet.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Create maps
You can create detailed maps of every planet.
Pro Helps with landing the spacecraft
You can use ScanSat to determine the slope of the surface you're landing on and avoid hills and other obstacles.
Pro Much better than the stock scanning system.
The stock resource scanning feature finishes instantly, while ScanSat functions over a long period of time and the orbits you're in, like scanning satellites do IRL.
Pro Science boost
Provides a little extra science to help you in your career and science mode games- but you'll have to work for it!
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
Cons
Con Some users experience performance losses
This is only true when the window is open, it shouldn't affect the rest of the game.
Con Extremely outdated and unsupported as of 2021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.