Quote: "From what I see it does nothing that adding to the texture map could do"
It adds a great deal to the appearance of the texture,I dont know how you would achieve this by adding to the texture map alone.
However I do think that a good texture would get by without using normal maps,personally I would prefer not to use shaders on everything as it will decrease the framerate a lot.
As cheese cake says the stock normal maps do not add a great deal to the appearance,this is due to the normal maps being created from the texture images,if you create your normal maps from actual geometry rather than a simple 2d image conversion you are likely to get far better results.
Quote: "because when you move around they dont change"
This would almost certainly require dynamic lighting.
Quote: "but looking at Rolfys images, the floor has odd black lines on it"
Those odd black lines are cracks in the texture,as I said in that post this texture is intended as a column detail so those cracks are grossly exaggerated in scale,I just used that particular texture cos' it was the first one I found that had detail I felt would work
That texture was also a 2d conversion using the nvidia filter for photoshop,I still think geometry created normal maps are the best way to go.
@inspire,I am just guessing at the reason it works for some and not others,I frankly dont have a clue why not.