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SP2 textures

ccartmel

ccartmel

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unitedkingdom
Folks,
I have seen much discussion on this and other forums on the impact of SP2 on texture formats.
Is there any information available as to which are now acceptable, or just .dds now
SP2 has totally ruined my FSX experience unless I can find an airline with 100% world coverage and a total monopoly of routes who flies unmarked aircraft with tinted windows:rolleyes:

I would only have 10,000 or so textures to convert:eek:

Regards
 
I do not think it is the texture format, FSX.2 even under DX10 displays dds, bmp, DXT1, DXT2, 8 bit, 32 bit, 555,556 just to name a few.

What you refer too most likely is the material below the texture. With DX10 switched on, it must be made out of a new material called FSX material, the old FS9 material just does not fix any colors.

So you have the choice to either switch of the DX10 preview, which does not bring any advantage but better mirrors of clouds in water, or redo all the aircraft models in GMAX from scratch, something I'm doing currently with My fleet and have about 1500 paints on DX10 compatible material.

Burkhard
 
Thanks for info

Burkhard,
thanks as usual for your response.
I raised the question because in the SDK it states that 'dds' formats are required viz "Flight Simulator X requires the DDS format to be used for aircraft textures" but that DXT1,3 and 5 are compression formats within that format. Another thread here suggests that DXT1 has gone!

I am concerned that non-dds format textures will become unacceptable as FS evolves, thus making forward compatibility of these add-ons impossible and negating the work that you and others do in providing the end-user with extra models etc.

This is the first time that the underlying material has been mentioned but not the texture.

As mentioned in another thread which I raised on the issues raised when I installed SP2 the cause of many add-ons failing was that they were compatible with FSX pre-SP2, but were non-compliant with the technologies advanced in the SDK (SP1A), and that while they may work in the short term due to a 'feature' their design will cause them to become non compatible at a later stage.

One interesting point raised in Phil Taylor's blog on SP2 is that the DX10 preview was named as such because the full backwards compatibility of the DX10 implementation was not complete, however no promises made as to if it ever will be:( hence the preview of what is to come. This is how I read it anyway.

Blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/10/02/acceleration-and-sp2.aspx

Regards
 
Currently, DXT1 bitmaps display completely properly on the models. I do publish it as DDS finally though for performance, but using the batch option of Imagetool the conversion of even thousands of DXTn bmp to the same DXTn dds is something the computer can do in a few seconds.

Anything but near future means FSXI, which is a bit time still. I understand the DX10 preview mainly to be an FSXI early technology Alpha - so everything that does not work there will not work in FSXI, and everything that works there might have a chance.
 
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Materials ?

I think I will play...
I have a few objects I designed with GMax and 'probably' clicked FSX materials when exporting. Did not realise what this was actually doing as could not find the settings information in the SDK.
Will play when I get FSX-SP2 working better than FSX-SP1.

Cheers
 
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