I'm looking for a simple way to convert the VC textures of my Carenado King Air from the HD textures to something smaller. I like it but its hard on frames.

Yes, I would love to know how to do this for their SR22.... which is the hardest aircraft on frame rates I have ever owned.... (incl NGX, Airbus Extended, etc).

 

I simply do not need or want such definition on the external model, as I fly inside the aircraft...... so being able to lower the definition of the textures would be fab......

The usual program for converting is DXTBMP search for it on web its free.

I'm glad to hear this about the Carenado SR22, I thought maybe I'd messed up my FSX installation when installing it, somehow.

 

They definitely need to do something intelligent re: performance optimization, that's clear now.

 

Gentlemen,

 

I've just converted all of the .DDS textures from the DXT5 format that they came from Carenado, down to DXT3 format, and saw quite a noticible improvement in performance.

 

Give it a try (back up your textures first!), and see what you think.

 

:smile:

Thanks for the find, that's a huge help!

 

I don't know why Carenado didn't do this.....

Gentlemen,

 

I've just converted all of the .DDS textures from the DXT5 format that they came from Carenado, down to DXT3 format, and saw quite a noticible improvement in performance.

 

Give it a try (back up your textures first!), and see what you think.

 

:smile:

 

So how did you do this?

Nvm I downloaded the photoshop dds plugin and cut the textures in half. I guess performance have gone up a little.

Gentlemen,

 

I've just converted all of the .DDS textures from the DXT5 format that they came from Carenado, down to DXT3 format, and saw quite a noticible improvement in performance.

 

Give it a try (back up your textures first!), and see what you think.

 

:smile:

 

Going from dxt5 to dxt3 shouldn't make any difference in performance unless you cut them in half from say 2048 to 1024. After you cut them in half you can still leave them in dxt5 compression. However, converting from 32bit to dxt5 will yield a performance increase even if you dont physically down size from 2048 to 1024 or similar. Although if the textures dont have an alpha channel you can convert them to dxt1 which will increase performance even further while not making much of a visual difference between that and dxt5 or 3.

 

 

So how did you do this?

• Googled DXTBMP (which I've used before in FS9 days) and downloaded it
  
• Opened it.
  
• Opened each .DDS file from the various SR22 'Texture' folders
  
• (Noted that they are all DDS DXT5 file type); Selected "Save as" and chose file type DDS DXT3.
  
• Overwrite, when prompted
  

As Jim said, I then tried a "second pass" down to DXT1, and noticed a considerable performance improvement, although some text based textures (like the word 'Cirrus' on the side of the aircraft get a little blurry from some angles), but this does not bother me, as I do not stare at external models, and I am not into screenshots.

 

So for me the texture reduction has been brilliant. But clearly it will not be for everyone.

Gentlemen,

 

I've just converted all of the .DDS textures from the DXT5 format that they came from Carenado, down to DXT3 format, and saw quite a noticible improvement in performance.

 

Give it a try (back up your textures first!), and see what you think.

 

:smile:

 

 

• Googled DXTBMP (which I've used before in FS9 days) and downloaded it
  
• Opened it.
  
• Opened each .DDS file from the various SR22 'Texture' folders
  
• (Noted that they are all DDS DXT5 file type); Selected "Save as" and chose file type DDS DXT3.
  
• Overwrite, when prompted
  

As Jim said, I then tried a "second pass" down to DXT1, and noticed a considerable performance improvement, although some text based textures (like the word 'Cirrus' on the side of the aircraft get a little blurry from some angles), but this does not bother me, as I do not stare at external models, and I am not into screenshots.

 

So for me the texture reduction has been brilliant. But clearly it will not be for everyone.

 

Actually Gentlemen, scrub the above! :-

 

Instead of the above method (reducing from DXT5 to DXT3 or DXT1, using the DXTBMP utility), I instead re-installed a fresh installation of the Carenado SR22, and this time I used Paint.NET and opened all of the .DDS textures, and simply reduced their size by 50% (generally reducing the files from 2048x2048 @ DXT5, to 1024x1024@ DXT3)...... I did not reduce further the 'small' files that were included.

 

The result is far better - the visuals are - on my system - much better than with the HD textures, because reducing the texture size using the above method, removed all the shimmering that the Carenado HD textures had. :smile:

 

There is a slight loss of crispness, but it's a much better visual result than by just changing DDS format from DXT5 to DXT3, and performance increase, on my system, in terms of FPS and Stutters, is about 100% !!

 

So in essence, all I've done is make some SD textures, that IMHO Carenado should have supplied as an option, for those do not want or need HD 2048x2048 textures, and want better performance. Let's hope they will release some natively done SD textures, so the above is not necessary.

 

:smile:

Final follow up to the above /\ /\ /\ /\ ........

 

There is no question it improves performance, especially around FPS, but further tests had shown that that the real issue with this product is that it is very stuttery in use...... and the stutters are related to the G1000 PFD and MFD displays, rather than the textures. :(

 

I (temporarily) substituted the Carenado G1000, for that from the default C172 G1000 and all stutters disappeared, even when flying with the full HD textures. ..... but this isn't a real solution as too many functions are lost, including the FD.

 

....with the Carenado G1000 PFD and MFD back in place, all the stutters were back, and lower frame rates.

 

So, in summary, reducing the texture sizes as above will probably help increase performance, especially where you are using a GPU with a VRAM of less than 2GB. (I am using a 5770 1GB).

 

......... but the real killer is the Carenado G1000 displays..... these really need some serious work to optimize them.

Or you can turn them off. Clearly the functionality is performance-intensive, which is to be expected, but again, there's a real question whether they could turn off or rate-reduce updating of screens not immediately in sight.

 

I'm guessing that for the sake of visual continuity and fast-switching between modes and pages, everything is updating all the time, which must be very exciting for our little CPUs.

 

For now, I'm just preferring a special SR22.cfg which I created and load in settings so everything outside the plane itself that is causing stutters, CTDs or OOMs by overloading what's left of the system by the SR22 can rest in bed instead.

 

Then I go back to cloud distance set at 2,000 miles etc. with the default C172 flying in Texas.