Hi guys,

 

After getting my PC/FSX.cfg set up I'm now turning to installing scenery and Ai aircraft etc and have come up with a question.

 

What texture format works best for a good quality/performance compromise for AI Aircraft in FSX? And, What is the best/easiest way to convert them?

 

I'll be using UT2 as my AI program as I'm coming from UT on FS9 and really like the interface, real schedules etc.

 

In FS9 I'd replaced most of the models with AI Aardvark, Fruit Stand etc and had textures formatted to DXT3 with Mips which from memory was the best format for FS9. I'm planning on using these models in FSX as well.

 

This leads me to another question. I'm running DX9 currently and followed Kostas guide to the letter so performance is fantastic, however it looks like a fix to some of the DX10 issues is getting some traction based on another thread here.

 

So in anticipation of potentially running in DX10 if all turns out well with those fixes, what about AI traffic in DX10?

 

How does one go about making sure the models used are compatible in DX10 and the textures aren't all white as I've seen other people post about?

 

Thanks,

 

Anthony

DDS with mip maps, it puts a lot less load on your graphics card since the scaled images are pre-rendered on a mip-mapped image. You get less interpolation artifacting because of that too.

 

Al

Thanks Alan, that was quick!

 

What's the best way to go about converting to DDS? I'm not familiar with that format.

 

I'm a little bit hazy but I remember in FS9 the lightmaps (and possibly props) couldn't be converted the same as the rest of the textures or else they wouldn't display properly. Does this still apply with the DDS format in FSX?

 

As far as DX10 goes. What about model & texture compatability there?

 

Cheers.

I always use DXT3 with mip maps for when I was running WOAI and then converted all my UT2 paints to DXT3 with mips as well. I tried doing a small batch of .dds but found no noticeable improvement in texture loading time or FPS by converting them to .dds, even though .dds is supposed to be a better format. Plus the fact that I dont have a batching tool to convert .bmps to .dds. When I converted 500+ paints from either WOAI or UT2 it was mighty helpful using a batch tool for the .bmp conversion, where as going from .dds to .bmp would have required days of work to do them one at a time, unless of course you can find some type of tool that can batch hundred of textures at a time. If you can find that tool or find a way to do it then you might as well go all .dds, but even then the difference might be slim.

 

If you look inside you FSX texture folder there are still lots of textures that are .bmp, including the clouds and there are still a lot of developers making native FSX sceneries using .bmps, so if using .dds made that much of a difference, I would imagine that you would see more textures both from stock FSX and addon package in .dds format rather than .bmp.

The best, or rather possibly easiest, way to do a conversion on a lot of textures, is to batch convert files in Photoshop. You can do that on a demo version of Photoshop too by the way, so you don't need to actually own it, just D/L the demo (from Adobe.com). Demo versions are fully functional, but will only run for 30 days. Older versions will however need you to add the DDS plug in, which you can find at the NVidia site by typing 'NVidia DDS Photoshop plug in' into Google. You put that in the PS plug ins folder, as you might have surmised.

 

How you do a batch process in Photoshop, is by opening up one texture file you want to convert (from the File menu in Photoshop, choose Open and navigate to your texture of choice). Next, open up the Actions palette in Photoshop (This, like all palettes in Photoshop, can be found on the Windows menu on the right hand side of the Photoshop menus). When you have the Photoshop Actions palette open, click on the New Action button at the bottom of that palette. This will open a dialogue box asking you to give your new action a name (call it whatever you like), and then there will be a Record button which you can click on. Photoshop will now be recording everything you do and creating an action script for it, and it will keep recording all your activities in Photoshop until you hit the Stop button at the bottom of the Actions palette. Which is very handy for repetitive tasks, such as converting a lot of textures.

 

So to get it to record what you need for a batch process, with one of your texture files open, you go to the File menu and select Save As, and choose DDS as the format and a folder location for it, and hit Save, also choosing any DDS options you want, such as Mip-Mapping etc. When you've hit okay/save, the file will save of course. Then you click the Stop button on the Photoshop Actions palette. This will complete the creation of your Photoshop Action, which you will in fact see listed at the bottom of the list in the Actions palette. Now any time you choose to use that action on any file you have open in Photoshop, it would save a DDS file of whatever you had open in Photoshop in the location you saved the file when you created your action. You can do that manually by clicking the Play button at the bottom of the Actions palette, but it would take a while to do that manually with a lot of files, so the smarter thing to do is...

 

Put all the texture files you want to convert into one folder, and then in Photoshop, go to the File menu and choose Automate, which will give you a fly out menu choice of Batch, choose that, and a palette will open up which walks you through what to do, i.e. which Action you want to use, which folder you want it to target, where and how you want it to save, whether you want to add a suffix to the file name or whatever, but if you just choose your folder with your textures in it and hit okay without altering any options, it will be fine and will batch convert them all by 'playing' your action on everything in that folder.

 

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

 

Al

Thanks for the very informative response Alan!

 

I'm at work at the moment so I'll try this when I'm at home.

 

Based on your instructions I assume the batch utility will only alter textures within a folder but not subfolders? i.e. I couldn't just point to my AI Aardvark 737-300 Folder and have it convert all the textures within the various texture folders?

 

Also does my logic from FS9 still hold true with regards to altering the lightmaps & props? i.e. these should not be converted in the same way, or is this no longer applicable in FSX and I can just convert everything to DDS with mip maps?

 

Thanks

Yup, a PS batch process with an Action will only find stuff in the main folder you target, not sub folders.

 

And with regard to the other question, I honestly don't know, I guess you'd have to experiment. So as with everything else of this nature, I'd be sure to back stuff up in case it all goes pear shaped. You can of course convert things back to original formats, but in doing that you will generally lose some quality in the process of having made two conversions on the file.

 

Al

Thanks again. Well it looks like I might have a bit of a long process ahead of me but I'll give it a shot.

 

Do you think I'll be fine converting the DXT3 with mip maps aircraft I had from FS9 to the DDS format or will that cause a loss in texture quality?

Al, I thought I would give your guide a try. I removed all my non-US carriers traffic files and tested at LAX using a set time/day and made a note of the performance. Then after making backups, using your guide converted all the .bmps for the remaining paints to .dds with mips and tested at LAZ again using the same conditions as the first test. I didnt notice any gain in performance by going to .dds.

 

Do you think itis really much better or worth the time doing so if the performance seems the same? Its a lot of work doing a .dds conversion and am afraid to spend serious time doing all my AI if the gain will be slim to none. Plus I read the other guys post who said he didnt think it would make a whole lot of difference. From your experience what type of gain have you experienced doing this?

 

Thanks

 

Jim

The performance gain in FPS terms would probably be minimal to negligible to be honest, however, the performance gain in terms of how a mip map helps to stop artifacting when viewing at slant angles and at longer distances will definitely be noticable (depending on GPU and FSX preferences). So it depends to some degree on what you are after, if it is mainly a visual improvement, then yes, I think it would do that.

 

WARNING - TECHNICAL CRAP AHEAD...

 

What you should be mindful of with Photoshop, is that the default interpolation method for conversions is not always the best choice. By default, the interpolation method is BiCubic, which is best for preserving smooth gradients and is geared toward the design industry when cropping photographs down, which is of course the prime purpose of Photoshop. But you might find an alternative interpolation method suits other tasks better.T

 

o do that, you look in the preferences of Photoshop, which are down at the bottom of the Edit menu in the PC version, and on the Photoshop menu in the Macintosh version. Also note that when changing any preference in any Adobe Creative Suite application, it is almost always the caase that if you change a preference with a document open, it becomes the preference for that document alone, whereas if you change a preference with only the application open, then that will become the main application preference, and you should be aware that document preferences, if they differ from the application preference, will override the application preference. That catches a lot of people out.

 

Al

The performance gain in FPS terms would probably be minimal to negligible to be honest, however, the performance gain in terms of how a mip map helps to stop artifacting when viewing at slant angles and at longer distances will definitely be noticable (depending on GPU and FSX preferences). So it depends to some degree on what you are after, if it is mainly a visual improvement, then yes, I think it would do that.

 

 

Thanks Al, but if the difference in performance between .bmp and .dds is next to nothing, then why bother converting the .bmps to .ddd when you can add mips to the .bmps and save some time?

 

In other words, if I have already mipped all my AI texture in DXT3 .bmps, then coverting them to .dds probably wont make any performance difference or difference in looks?

Well, the simple answer is that 'next to nothing' is not the same as 'nothing'. DDS is ever so slightly less work for a GPU to handle, and (supposedly) uses a slightly better compression method too, which would mean a bit less artifacting.

 

Al

AFAIK, the only difference between "DDS" and "BMP" is that DDS is a well-defined header while BMP is FS-unique (I think only imagetool and DXTbmp fully understand the header), and the image data in DDS is flipped compared to BMP. Also in FSX DDS can support DXT5 compression, not sure about DXT5 in BMP. But from IQ standpoint, DXT3 with mips in DDS should be identical to DXT3 with mips in BMP.

 

Note that different image programs use different methods to subsample the image when creating mips. Don't just use the default, which in my experience is usually the fastest but not the best.

 

scott s.

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