Hi: I just spent a bunch of time and money tweaking my computer for FSX, and its running great. I am also now learning how certain sceneries just slow things down. Orbx, Tongass Fords, and anything from Flytampa runs smoothly, but I have several sceneries from an other manufacturer (whose name I will not mention) that I purchased before I became "enlightened" that seem to bog down. From what I can see from posts in this forum, it is because this manufacturer does not "mipmap" its files. Here's my question. What is a mipmap and an alpha channel? Should all texture files have these? Is there anything else a properly formated texture needs to have? Is there software that will allow me to do a batch analysis of texture files, and tell me what I am missing, and then how can I add the missing attributes without having to go through each of thousands of texture files? I am a good reader and a quick study, so if someone can recommend a source where I can read up these topics, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Mike Gutierrez. North Hollywood, California.

Hello Mike,You can find all sorts of things in the Wikipedia (including a complete assortment of all the world's nonsense!) But, concerning your question, simply look up: - MIP maps - alpha channels - S3 Texture Compression (DXT textures) - Direct Draw Surface (DDS textures)and this will give you a pretty good start, although some of it is highly technical.Flight Simulator comes with a texture tool in the Software Development Kit (ImageTool) and you should be able to create batch files for it. Martin Wright also made a great number of tools for manipulating FS images:http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/Once you understand the concept and have experience with the textures, you will know the typical sizes of compressed and MIP mapped textures. To your surprise, you will see by their size that many, many of your third-party textures have no MIP maps and many are not even compressed!Best regards.Luis

Keep in mind there have also been long running battles (and I don't think it has ever been resolved) on "correct" texture formats, though this seems to be mainly a battle over aircraft textures more than scenery textures. The battle concerns whether or not textures using DXT compression are unacceptably degraded (I think there also used to be issues of some graphics cards not liking DXT and needing or not needing "render to texture"), or if textures containing "mip maps" result in "bluries". Some users will remove all mips, some will add them, some developers supply mipped textures and 32 bit uncompressed both and let the users decide.scott s..

Thanks for all the input. Mike

Scott brings up some excellent points and I venture to add another opinion, that of the developers of FS:All this and more can be found in the Software Development Kit documentation - a wealth of information. Of course, it is only their opinion, nothing more, and everybody is free to disagree.Best regards.Luis