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A question about texture formats

Entaryn

Entaryn

Messages
17
Hello all,
I am developing scenery for P3D v4.5 and I am not sure about one thing.

What is the best image format for textures to use? Or what is the differnece between formats and for what should I use which?

I convert all of my textures to .dds and it looks that it works.

Thanks you,
Regards

Patrik P.
 
DDS is fine. If your texture makes use of an alpha channel, convert to dxt5 DDS, if not use dxt1. There may be situations where you want Mipmaps, in which case you have to flip a switch in either DxtBmp or ImageTool or the Nvidia Plugin.
 
mjahn said:
DDS is fine. If your texture makes use of an alpha channel, convert to dxt5 DDS, if not use dxt1. There may be situations where you want Mipmaps, in which case you have to flip a switch in either DxtBmp or ImageTool or the Nvidia Plugin.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply! When I convert the textures in MCX material editor, what type of DDS IT makes? DXT1 or 5? Also what exactly Is a mipmap and when to use it?
 
I think the Material Converter does exactly that, uses dxt5 for textures with an alpha, and dxt1 for those without. Probably always creates MipMaps to cover all bases. Get DxtBmp to check the format specifics.

Main use of MipMaps is when your object is seen from vaying distances including far away, such as scenery. Downside is, they come with a size penalty. Don't use them if your object is always close up, such as (usually) an airplane. (Short version of a much longer story, better google for more.)
 
Hi,

MCX does automatically select the correct DXT compression indeed. When an alpha channel is present it uses DXT5 and else DXT1. Mipmaps are always added by MCX (underwater ImageTool is used to write the DDS files by the way).
 
mjahn said:
I think the Material Converter does exactly that, uses dxt5 for textures with an alpha, and dxt1 for those without. Probably always creates MipMaps to cover all bases. Get DxtBmp to check the format specifics.

Main use of MipMaps is when your object is seen from vaying distances including far away, such as scenery. Downside is, they come with a size penalty. Don't use them if your object is always close up, such as (usually) an airplane. (Short version of a much longer story, better google for more.)
Click to expand...
Thanks!
 
arno said:
Hi,

MCX does automatically select the correct DXT compression indeed. When an alpha channel is present it uses DXT5 and else DXT1. Mipmaps are always added by MCX (underwater ImageTool is used to write the DDS files by the way).
Click to expand...
Thanks Arno!
 
I used to hate DDS, but I've grown used to it, because it has a major benefit of avoiding the use of tools where making payware textures is a grey area from an EULA standpoint, such as DXTBMP or AceIt or TGATool2a, because you can export DDS from GIMP or PhotoShop or whatever (I suspect this is a bigger reason why payware developers in Open Rails are using it than is stated - there is no "imagetool" for that platform, tying you to AceIt if you want big ACE format images with 8-bit alpha). It's also super useful in terms of being able to use DXT5 compression, which is superior in cases where you want good alpha data (alpha cutouts for windows are one of the tools I use to reduce vertex counts). Your mileage may vary if you're doing freeware work in DXT1 or DXT3 formats, and it seems the major benefit in those cases is that future platforms may not read extended bitmaps (maybe some already don't?).
 
Last edited:
ErickC said:
I used to hate DDS, but I've grown used to it, because it has a major benefit of avoiding the use of tools where making payware textures is a grey area from an EULA standpoint, such as DXTBMP or AceIt or TGATool2a, because you can export DDS from GIMP or PhotoShop or whatever (I suspect this is a bigger reason why payware developers in Open Rails are using it than is stated - there is no "imagetool" for that platform, tying you to AceIt if you want big ACE format images with 8-bit alpha). It's also super useful in terms of being able to use DXT5 compression, which is superior in cases where you want good alpha data (alpha cutouts for windows are one of the tools I use to reduce vertex counts). Your mileage may vary if you're doing freeware work in DXT1 or DXT3 formats, and it seems the major benefit in those cases is that future platforms may not read extended bitmaps (maybe some already don't?).
Click to expand...
Thank you for info
 
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