As I understand the technique of texture baking goes like this:
- You make a model with a high number of polygons and render it in high resolution. The number of polygons would kill the frame rate of any computer instantly.
- You take the image from the renderer an stick it to a simple model with a low number of polygons for the simulation. The frame rate monitor shows sign of life again.
In this thread at netwings a few gauges for a FW-190 are shown. On the last page the high poly model of the clock.
http://forums.netwings.org/forums/showthread.php?p=15551#post15551
Drooling.