Hi All:I have seen several threads which mention change your textures to DXT3 to increase frame rates.Sounds like a good idea but could someone explain to someone who is not to puter literate how do you change the aircraft textures to DXT3.Sorry for not understanding.Kenny G.

Check out AVSIM's "The Aircraft Painter's Forum - Jim

Kenny,Check out Martin Wright's graphics site. He has a lot of excellent freeware tools that are very useful in FS. Learning how to use them is not too difficult. You want the one called DXTBMP. You can put your DXT3 texture in there and send it to your paint program, edit the texture, save it, then reload it into DXTBMP and it will save it as DXT3, with alpha. You can optionally choose to save or discard any extra bitmaps which might have been included in the original file.http://fly.to/mwgfxCheers,Bob

Try MS's free ImageTool.

As an addition: I have done what Bob suggests (convering normal .bmp to dtx3 .bmp with DTXBMP) for the Meljet 747 and 777.(reducing each texture bitmap from appr. 5Mb to 1.3 MB)Result (on my 2.54 Ghz system, 512 Mb memory, 128Mb video): a hugh improvement in load time, and no more blurry tail section.And (at least to my eye): no visible reduction in quality.Rob

I find DXT conversion is a good tweak too. My system seems to have no problems with DXT textures, so basically any aircraft I buy or download, I'll convert everything on the outside to DXT3 with mipmaps and everything on the inside to DXT1 (if I can get away with it).For example, one well-known and respected 737 commercial package is especially ripe for extensive 32 bit to DXT conversion (for your own private use of course and after saving all the original textures). Many interior textures even including some VC textures can be converted into DXT1 with little penalty in visible quality. I also have no problems with DXT3 mipmaps, indeed they improve the appearance of the exterior DXT3 textures on my system (ATI 9800) because the mipmaps get rid of noticeable jaggy lines that my anti-aliasing does not pick up. Sometimes the textures will appear blurry but if I zoom in and out in spot view that usually clears everything up.The result -- I have a very complex and nice looking aircraft (both outside and inside the virtual cockpit) that use a lot less memory and load much faster. That can't be bad. I also think the FS9 runs smoother but I'm not sure.I often go one step further and that extra step raises a question that I would like to ask. Specifically, I convert the non-hull interior CABIN textures into a straight black DXT1. Complex cabin textures such as seats, microwave ovens, carpeting, etc. all look great and I would like to keep them, but not at my current processing level. Changing all that to black DXT1 leaves me with decent looking interior cabin hull textures and windows where I can set up good wing views with Active Camera but without the possible overhead of complex seat and other virtual cabin textures. So the question, does anyone know if setting a more complex DXT3 texture (e.g., seats, carpet) to a very simple, straight black (or other arbitrary, single color) DXT1 texture reduces graphical processing overhead?