July 2, 201114 yr Don't know exactly where to put this, so sorry if it's in the wrong place.I'm trying to batch process my old FS9 AI .bmp textures into .dds format for fsx. It's going to take quite a while to manually convert them all using convImX, and I don't have much experience at all with batch files and can't find any information on what batch commands that program accepts. Could someone help me write a simple batch file that I could drop into each aircraft texture folder and execute, which would convert the .bmp textures into .dds with DXT5?thanks
July 2, 201114 yr Moderator I'm trying to batch process my old FS9 AI .bmp textures into .dds format for fsx. WHY?They will work just fine in .bmp version in FSX. In fact, if you buy Ultimate Traffic 2 which uses a lot of FSX native models, all the textures are in .bmp format. Even though .dds is supposed to be faster, I dont think you will notice any difference at all in speed, but you will spend a huge amount of time doing a conversion like what you want to do and it will probably all for nothing.If I were you, I would use imagetool.exe and set up a batch file and convert all the AI textures to DXT3 with mipmaps. That will probably give you better performance than doing what you want to try, as well as take any shimmer off of the AI and a load of your GPU since it can use the mips at distance rather than trying to render one texture from far away. Mip maps are just like 10 smaller versions of the original texture, that get smaller in size as you get farther away from the object. So, if your object which in your case is an AI plane and it has no mip maps, the GPU will try to render that one texture as soon as it comes into view depending on your distance. Doing it like puts a little more strain on the GPU as well as making the texture apprear to shimmer. Now, if it the object has mip maps, then the object/AI will have 10 versions of the same texture to display and will choose the smallest one when you are far away, then as you get closer to the object it will start pulling the larger versions of the texture. The result is less shimmering and better performance.The same can be said about scenery objects as well, which is why a lot of the top scenery developers use mip maps in their airports to help with shimmer and performance. Another reason why a lot of older Aerosoft scenery shimmer is because they are shipped without mip maps and the user has to add them if they are so inclined.Hope this helps, but if I were you I would save the pain and time of converting all your AI textures to DXT since its not really necessary. Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator
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